Endymion Revisited
by LikeMulderandScully
Summary: Shelagh's history, as told during her engagement; paired with excerpts from John Keats 1818 poem 'Endymion'. Turnadette
1. Preface

"_...All lovely tales that we have heard or read:_

_An endless fountain of immortal drink,_

_Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink._

_Nor do we merely feel these essences_

_For one short hour; no, even as the trees_

_That whisper round a temple become soon_

_Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,_

_The passion poesy, glories infinite,_

_Haunt us till they become a cheering light_

_Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast,_

_That, whether there be shine, or gloom o'ercast,_

_They always must be with us, or we die._

_Therefore, 'tis with full happiness that I_

_Will trace the story of Endymion._

_The very music of the name has gone_

_Into my being, and each pleasant scene_

_Is growing fresh before me as the green_

_Of our own vallies: so I will begin..."_

**-John Keats, **_**Endymion **_


	2. Chapter 1: A Thing Of Beauty

In Poplar the autumn of 1958 was much like those during the years that preceded it. For most, it passed unheeded, as much of life does; for a few, it held tragedy and uncertainty. For a newly engaged couple, however, it was the sweetest of seasons: devoted to making new memories and, apparently, sharing old ones.

"There's not 'that' much to know Patrick."

"There's a whole life! One I very much want to be a part of."

Shelagh soon-to-be Turner, as she currently referred to herself, sighed in mock-exasperation and then laughed at her fiancés pleading expression, absolutely delighted it so resembled his sons'.

Her musical laughter went ringing round the courtyard garden and into the silent halls of Nonnatus House. A passing Sister Monica Joan was reminded of the highest register of bells at a certain abbey, only she couldn't currently remember the name of it.

"First steps then," he began; turning towards her on the bench they shared and resting an elbow over the back rail, his black fringe falling just over one dark eyebrow; "Where did you grow up?"

"Aberdeenshire, then Edinburgh after my mother died."

Hearing this, he looked up from his perusal of her delicately folded fingers; hoping beyond hope she would continue. Patrick ached to gain wisdom from her motherless childhood, not for himself, but for reassurance that his Timothy's life would indeed carry on without the presence of his mother. Admittedly though, this concern had lessened considerably since his engagement.

As always, his thoughts were as obvious to her in his eyes as their dark evergreen hue; and so, after one steady breath, she obliged.

"He couldn't bear to live in the cottage any longer than absolutely necessary, even I was old enough to comprehend that."

His question, again like his motivation, was unspoken.

"Nearly eight. She passed away February 26th, 1934." She smiled sadly, remembering the next detail. "We both forgot my birthday that year, so the next I had two parties."

She watched him do the now possible arithmetic in his head with a modicum of bemused satisfaction, but the smugness that crept into what could now only be called a smirk as he reached his final sum, her current age, made her laugh aloud once again.

A clearly nervous straightening of his tie in the very next moment prompted her to reach over and steady his hand; silently communicating her graceful acceptance of the gap between them. Their love was ageless and Shelagh had already determined it would never ever matter.

There was profound gratefulness in his expression, and she sensed he was again about to thank her for loving him and say that he was so unworthy of someone so young and beautiful. These comments always made Shelagh uncomfortable, so she did what she thought Trixie might:

With a grin, she teased him. "Any other questions, old man?"

Patrick nodded slightly, ruefully, smiling. Her point was made.

He recovered his composure quickly; avid curiosity winning over self-deprecation. "Was it just you and your parents then?"

"I had a younger brother once- for a week or so. He was what took my mother from us; in the end."

She stopped.

"Shelagh you don't... I mean, is this too painful a subject?"

She was quiet and still, considering the long un-accessed memories and his gentle approach. She was so grateful for it; his unfailingly gentle nature. It always made her feel stronger, bolder, like she could do anything.

She looked full into his eyes with significance, clarifying once more that she was willing. "Not anymore...And not with you."

Smiling, he looked at her with the somewhat confused wonder that he had been feeling since her form had appeared out of the mist on that lonely road: where on earth had this perfect creature appeared from and why in heaven's name had she chosen him.

A deep breath on her part, and then she began anew. His compassion and interest anchoring her, freeing her mind to wander back into the painful past; steady in the knowledge that her present was secure.

"She was badly weakened by the stress of the birth; I came to understand later that she had haemorrhaged and then developed an infection. As a girl though I only saw how gaunt and pale her face became as she withered away from us. I was with her when she fell asleep for the last time."

She remembered.

A stark hospital room, bleached sheets, alabaster skin and pale lips, awash with the light from a rare winter sun. Utterly colorless save Shelagh's pink wool dress and her mother's abundance of fire colored hair. Her own small fingers traced through the soft curls, separating them, plaiting and un-plaiting the shining carnelian mane; patient and quite determined to carry out her father's wishes.

He had told her to stay with Mam until he came back, to make sure someone was there to say hello if she woke up; a responsibility the young Shelagh was only too happy to accept. He himself was absent, she thought possibly he was with the baby; the tiniest of bundles, who had been whisked away from his sister through the lonely hallways almost as soon as he had been born. That had been a week ago, and she had heard nothing of the bundle since. Her curiosity about her sibling was abstract, never having laid eyes on the wee thing and having been much more worried about the acuteness of Mammy's screams than this promised brother or sister.

"She collapsed in the sitting room just before dinner. Dada moved so fast. He had a pillow under her head and was running for the telephone before I even knew what had happened."

Struck by how clear the recollection was, she commented; "I remember it so vividly now." He nodded, and there was a sadness about it; Shelagh thought he must have been considering how well Timothy would remember the awful time they went through with his late wife; and so she delved back into the story, trying to distract him.

"I took my father's hand when he had to let go of Mam's at the hospital. It must have been the Royal Infirmary we were in, now that I think on it. He would not sit downstairs in the waiting room and I would not let go of him. We sat on the floor in the cold hallway and listened to my brother being born. I had never heard pain like that before. I hoped then that I never would again. Little did I know..."

Patrick smiled down into his tie. "...That you would make the agony of childbirth the soundtrack to much of your life?" He offered.

"Quite." She sighed. "After some time, a kind nurse with the most beautiful lavender eyes I had ever seen brought us two wooden chairs. After that, I remember being alone; out in that same hallway, measuring out the seconds by kicking my shiny black shoes against the solid chair leg." Shelagh knocked rhythmically on the bench with a small white knuckle.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

The solidity of both the movement and the sound seemed to bring her out of the fog of the past and back into the garden sunshine.

Squinting up into it, she felt herself relax. "Then it's only snatches of memories of sitting on her hospital bed, and of course standing in the snow at her funeral." She concluded, sniffling only a little, and daring once more to meet his sympathetic eyes with her own now misty ones.

Quietly then, a new query: "Do you remember much about her? Before she was gone, ...I mean? What was she like?'

"Oh. There are many things I can't quite grasp, like when remembering a dream. I can hear her singing voice as clear as day, but I don't remember her speaking tone exactly."

He nodded again, understanding.

"I remember her best in contradictions. She was unfailingly gentle and yet absolutely firm, suffering no unkindness or rudeness from anyone and yet her admonishments, to me at least, were always without judgement and full of love."

"She scolded my father like she did me, almost like he was a little boy I thought sometimes;" smiling as she thought of his dear old chastened face once again. "but then..." her tone softening; "then, there were moments when she looked at my father like he was the very heaven above, as if he could do no wrong. Like you look at me sometimes."

"It should be all the time, Shelagh." Then, wryly: "You tell me if I ever stop looking at you as if God himself hadn't plucked you from among the stars and brought you to Nonnatus just so I could meet you."

She gave him an only slightly sarcastic nod in response and bit her lip to keep the smile from splitting her face wide open.

"Well, actually, later still I found out that my mother had met my father while in the Edinburgh courts defending her own actions as a suffragist."

"A rebel, hmm?" Mused Patrick, completely failing to conceal his utter delight at this particular fact; as it gave him a bit of insight into Shelagh's somewhat hidden stubborn side.

She grinned gainfully at him. "Oh yes. She took nothing lying down, my Scots-Irish mother."

"I suppose that's how you came by your given name then?"

"Definitely. It was her mother's name, my grandmother, I doubt I met her, but it's always made me feel connected to my family- even when I wasn't."

Patrick decided against pushing into that last comment, instead waiting for her to share something else. In the not so far distance he heard singing echoing through the halls of Nonnatus, escaping through the windows and spiralling into the crisp air with the grey fireplace smoke.

Shelagh heard it too; wistfully she spoke again. "My mother's faith was mine too, as a child. I have her to thank for my early foundation in that regard. And I have never ceased being grateful for that, because I had somewhere to turn to later on, when everything else fell away."

Patrick again piqued at this; another small indication of something troubling- but he sensed she wasn't quite ready to share those confidences, so he steered the flow of conversation back again to her earlier past.

"Do you resemble her?"

"In everything but my hair, according to my father. I'm not perfectly sure of the resemblance, but I do know I have her eyes. He spoke of that often enough: 'eyes like the clearest sky, piercing, introspective- and yet soft.' Or so he said." She demurred.

"She had outrageously red hair she let fall in curls about her shoulders before that was quite proper. Like a waterfall of fire when the sun hit it just right. I remember passionately envying it, even as the smallest girl." Her eyes sparkled, divulging another confession. "It's one sin I have never, and will never, ask forgiveness for. The joy I can hold on to just having the memory of that intense covetousness must be my pardon for it."

"A thing of beauty... as they say, my dear."

"Exactly; and as you see, I have my father's hair instead; which I have treasured for many years, but I cannot pretend I do not sometimes still wish for those red curls."

They smiled genuinely at one another, and Patrick leaned away slightly, regarding her.

"I imagined your hair you know, before..." he confessed.

"Really?" She hadn't thought. It would have been rather flattering, if indeed she wasn't slightly appalled at just how bad a nun she must have made those last few months.

"And how does reality suit you, Doctor?" She asked, slightly facetiously, straightening her already perfect posture in readiness for her fiance's diagnosis.

Observing her momentarily, the rational medical man emerged from behind the attentive suitor for the first time during this encounter. He could see that her simple twisted style was probably held by a single large pin at the back, as he had seen his late wife do upon occasion. He was rudimentally certain of the physics at work here, and about equally certain of what he wanted to do next.

His fingers twitched momentarily in consideration before he raised them- reaching up just past her chin, hovering there over her rapidly flushing cheek in the as yet unsought permission.

"May I?" He asked, sounding more breathless to his own ears than he had intended to. "I'll need the full effect of course, to be sure of my conclusion."

She glanced about the courtyard like the nun inside her might also have done, but instead of shame or trepidation as the motivation; Shelagh was simply considering the moment. She wouldn't want to embarrass one of her sisters with such a display. But no one seemed to be near, and the singing had died away. The thought of this exchange taking place somewhere she had, in a previous life, knelt to pray cheered her for some inexplicable reason and she nodded her assent. Just enough to allow him to continue; only truly certain of her decision once she had already made it.

The twist loosened, and then gave way; tumbling down Shelagh's back.

And then his fingers were running through the golden cascade, spreading and drawing the strands over her shoulders and fully into the sunlight.

The rediscovered luxury of loose hair was one Shelagh hadn't anticipated, but she was aware of it now. She wasn't sure she'd ever been so aware of anything in her life.

The slip of the strands through his questing fingers. Foreign fingers; sliding over her scalp separating the sun-warmed locks and allowing the clean fresh air to wind its way through them. She went cold all over, despite the temperate autumn day and then just as suddenly flushed, warmth spreading upward from within her chest; brightly coloring her cheeks and lips.

His thumb too-deliberately brushed the shell of her ear in its thorough perusal and the feeling devoured her whole. She wanted to perish right then and there in the all-consuming fire he brought up from inside her and simultaneously to somehow go on living forever in only that very second. But she had no care for this paradox as reality fell away, leaving only the visceral; thought was unnecessary when surrounded in this primitive blaze.

As utterly as she was being transfixed by sensation; he was captivated by image.

Doctor Patrick Turner had seen many things. He liked to think that living and working where he did, in the thick of it, he had seen almost every side of humanity. But he had never seen this. Seen her. For this _was_ her. Truly, simply and finally Shelagh. Her goodness, her tenderness personified. And it was exquisite.

He could only attempt to describe her as angelic. There were just no other words for the way her hair and complexion became one with the halo of the afternoon sun at her back. She glowed, contrasted against the sky and the red brick.

She was exalted, and he was joyous. Awash in awe of the gift she had just given him. It was such a simple thing, to see her hair down in the light, but in their world of complete structure the juxtaposition of such freedom was intoxicating.

For he, a simple man, was sitting on an ordinary bench, in a small allotment garden, holding a ray of sunshine in his own terribly unworthy hands.

"Shelagh." He breathed out in wonder and she inhaled every trembling note. No one could say her name like this man could. No one.

The still wandering thumb brushed against her neck below her ear and he was suddenly out of oxygen. Excepting her name, the following uneveness in his breath was the only outward sign belying the war roiling between his body and mind.

Her own breath hitched in response as his fingers did, catching in a small tangle, and she, just as unexpectedly, lost her nerve.

Helplessly the feeling engulfed her, awareness sharpening quickly to a fine point and suddenly piercing through her lungs. She visibly trembled. As surprising as she had found the previous warmth, the utter terror that now flooded through her was somehow worse because it, unlike the pleasure, was so unwelcome. She did not know why she was so suddenly and painfully conscious of everything. It was simultaneously confusing and annoying. Why couldn't she just stay; remain in the joy of that bliss? Did she have so little trust?

He saw her look of happiness change suddenly to trepidation and uncertainty before the sunlit curtain of her hair fell and obscured her from view.

Cut off from the conversation of their gaze, reality also came crashing back to Patrick, albeit less frighteningly. He leaned farther down to try and catch her eye and dropped his hand from where it was resting on her shoulder to join with her now restless one. He clasped it carefully, with reverence, and waited; sorting out his own thoughts.

He was filled with empathy, understanding completely how at sea she must be with all of this- the sudden and overwhelming physicality of touch after a life spent honing the contemplative, the cerebral and the practical- not the sensuous. He was far past overwhelmed himself and... well... he'd certainly never been a nun.

Her forehead was still downcast; she was looking at their still-joined hands.

His unoccupied fingers gathered back the golden caramel curtain, tucking it behind her ear, then ghosted down her jaw to her chin, just lightly touching the soft underside. Her eyes returned to his as she raised her head, a fragility in their blueness that Patrick had never before witnessed.

He smiled at her fully, reassuringly squeezed her hand and Shelagh found she could breathe again. His compassion washed over her like the light of the sun, as warm and constant as the hand that held hers. If she was as the rays of the sun shining from heaven; he was her foundation, her solid earth to warm.

Equilibrium regained, mind and heart steady, she beamed up at him.

"So, what do you think?" She tempted him almost timidly, remembering at once the original purpose for the rather... singular, interlude they had just shared.

Offering it back to her, he held the single hairpin between them in the air; in their shared breath. He held her gaze reverently, trusting their connection to explain what he couldn't put into words; all his million brilliant hopes for their future and the journey that would take them to it. Together.

"It's going to take some getting used to."

* * *

_"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:_  
_ Its loveliness increases; it will never_  
_ Pass into nothingness; but still will keep_  
_ A bower quiet for us, and a sleep_  
_ Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing."_

_-Book I_


	3. Chapter 2: A Little Space

Strains of a traditional waltz swayed and echoed down the corridor from the sitting room to the kitchen of Nonnatus House; and Mrs. B had switched off her own small wireless in its favor. She didn't know who'd put on the record player, but was pleased by the choice; the melody lending an uncharacteristic elegance to her steps as she moved about preparing the evening's tea.

She was joined in her appreciation by Doctor Turner, who was also listening as he held open the large wooden door for his colleague. Sister Julienne, by contrast, was slightly perplexed at the mid-afternoon Strass concert as she entered, then with a small indulgent smile, supposed Sister Monica Joan had put it on. This assumption, of course, was mistaken. The sight that awaited them in the sitting room brought immediate tears to both of their eyes, as much as one of them would later deny it.

* * *

Shelagh had spotted him just around the corner as she left the clinic that afternoon.

She was still leaving two hours early, despite best attempts to 'finish a few necessary tasks' and stay longer, but Sister Julienne had been adamant. She was only to work half-time until her convalescence was completely at an end. She had bristled a wee bit, as she hated feeling invalid, but Patrick had sweetly reminded her that the nuns were under no obligation to let her work at all, and that half-time was a gift they were offering her. So she had accepted, for the time being.

The boy hadn't looked up as she approached the bench he was seated on, obviously absorbed in the thin leaflet in his hands. She wondered absently why he hadn't come in to the clinic after school like he often did on Tuesdays.

The posture of his sloping back exuded defeat; a downcast head resting on a small fist, pushing up one cheek in a way that under any other circumstances would have been terribly endearing. A very maternal concern welled up within her immediately.

Softly she called him. "Timothy?"

He looked up sharply, startled, coloured red under the brim of his emerald green cap, and began hurriedly stuffing the off-white paper into the pocket of his short trousers.

He stood, pulling up one of his slightly droopy kneesocks in the process and greeted her with a bright "Hello!" but Shelagh was not fooled.

"Timothy." She needed only to firmly say his name and he immediately folded like the pamphlet he was hiding, collapsing back down on the bench seat with a thump. "What's the matter?"

"Year 6."

She paused; not quite sure how to take this cryptic answer. She sat down beside him and gathered her thoughts for a moment. Timothy didn't move, except to clasp his hands together between his knees.

"Can you tell me about it?"

"I guess so."

He shuffled his feet. The tips of his brown leather shoes scraped the ground, just barely. Noticing this Shelagh's heart went out to him even more. He was still such a boy, far too young to be so despondent all by himself. But she was here now, and she could help. Would help.

He finally looked up at her and recognized the help she was offering in her eyes. Sighing like only a child can, he fished the crumpled pamphlet out of his pocket and handed it over.

She flattened it against the skirt of her blue midwife's uniform and stifled the small smile that crept over her features as she read the bold title: _Ballroom Dance for Boys._

She was glad he didn't catch her amusement and schooled her face back into one of concern as he began to explain.

"In Year 6 we have to learn how to dance the 'proper' way, with girls and everything. Mr. Thomassen says that this is all part of being prepared to go to upper school and is an 'important lesson for every young man learn." Shelagh loved the change in his tone as he gruffly imitated his teacher, he was such a clever boy.

"We have a dance at the end of term, and all of us have to learn the waltz before then, because the Year 6 girls from St. Finbars are all invited." He paused, shifting in his seat, a little unsure of how to go on.

"So you are having trouble learning the dance?"

He scoffed lightly and smiled conspiratorially over at her. "I'm rubbish actually." He began to swing his feet against the pavement, the toe of each shoe lightly scraping over and over.

She grinned back at him, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. "You'll get better with practice Timothy."

At this he suddenly dropped the boyish facade of studied indifference and his voice took on an edge of agitation as the true problem rushed out of him all at one. "But that's the whole problem! Everyone else is improving and I'm not! All the other boys are practicing at home with their Mums and they keep getting better and even though Gary said it isn't my fault I don't have a mum to help anymore I'm still falling behind and ..."

Realizing how much he had just revealed, he stifled a bit and tried to put on a defiant tone. "I figured I'd just make do on my own, but now I don't think it's going to work." His eyes pleaded with her despite the bravado he was attempting to convey. "I don't exactly know what to do."

He swung his nervous feet even faster now and Shelagh was desperately holding back tears. Her head swam with memories of moments so similar to this one in her own adolescence. Righteous anger rose up within her, replacing compassion and tears; she couldn't stand what life was doing to this little boy without her permission.

The scrape of his shoes brought her back to the moment and she swallowed her irrational urge to wrap him up in cotton wool and hide him away from everything painful. She steadied herself inwardly, anger falling backwards into determination.

"Timothy," She breathed encouragingly. "You're forgetting that you have something none of those other boys have."

"What? Three left feet?"

"No silly boy, Me. You have me."

The young Turner's eyes lit up. She could help him! Now also smiling once again, his future stepmother continued.

"I'm a bit rusty on the dancing, but I'm sure if we put our heads together over that leaflet and avail ourselves of the nun's fine record collection, we can make a good start."

Her eyes softened even further and she leant towards the boy just a bit more, adding a sense of privacy to the conversation. "You shouldn't ever feel you have to just 'make do on your own' Timothy. You have your Dad, as busy as he seems sometimes; and you have me. You can always, always come to us for help because we love you."

His swinging calves finally stilled, the drooping green kneesock slipping even further. She hadn't really been thinking when she spoke, and realized this was the first time she'd said anything like that to him.

"You love me?"

"Of course I do." Then rather hesitantly, "I hope that's all right."

"Yes, it's great!" He nodded with enthusiasm at first, then quieted, musing this new information. "Actually, I think maybe I knew that you did already." Shelagh's eyebrows rose a fraction.

"Like when you helped with my scraped arm and I made you that picture? Those were things mummy and I used to do, and she loved me very much."

"Yes. She did." She confirmed absolutely. "You mother loved you very much Timothy, and still loves you now. Forever. That's what mums do."

He grinned at her gamely; "I'm actually luckier than all the boys at school then." It was a statement, albeit an enigmatic one; but it was certainly not meant as a question.

"How's that?" Shelagh asked, intrigued, as she watched Timothy get up and cross in front of her, placing his hands on his small hips, now eager to get started on his dance lessons.

She had been absentmindedly eyeing his shoes; thinking the leather would definitely need a shine up before school the next day. The thought flew right out of her head when he answered her.

"Because I have two mums."

* * *

There were more moments than he would care to admit recently when Patrick Turner had worried that he was being selfish asking Shelagh to become a part of his and Timothy's little broken family. He had wondered if it would all really truly work, despite his son's consistent assurances that these developments were all okay with him. What if he felt left out? Or worried that his father's love for his new wife would somehow diminish the absolute love that his father had for him?

As he stood watching the two people he cherished above all things circling the furniture, with their eyes fixed on one another's feet, he realized something; he'd wasted a great deal of worry on nothing at all.

"Timothy!" Shelagh gasped, laughing.

"Sorry! I'm not trying to step on your toes I promise!"

Patrick chuckled and the two bright faced, exhilarated dancers turned to look at him, in surprise, but with joy.

Timothy was first to speak, his hands dropping from Shelagh's as he turned toward the doorway. "Oh, but I was doing so well before Dad! You should have come in ten minutes ago."

Sister Julienne had still not moved an inch since she and the doctor had come around the corner. She was transfixed; silently watching the new family interact. How could she have ever doubted that this was her sister's true calling? Shelagh was redeeming a family, righting it to set back on it's foundations. She was in that moment immeasurably proud of the graceful and loving woman the unassuming yet impassioned postulant she had met ten years prior had become. This surely, was one of God's greatest blessings: the gift of purpose.

Coming back to herself at the low resonance of Dr. Turner's answering laugh, she wiped a wayward tear from her cheek and industriously folded her hands.

She recognized the questioning glances her colleagues were throwing one another over, well, over their son's head: Patrick was undoubtedly wondering what had prompted the dancing lesson, and Shelagh was trying to explain. They needed a moment, a conversation; so she graciously provided them the opportunity and the space.

"Timothy?"

He turned and addressed her respectfully. "Yes Sister Julienne?"

"I can smell that Mrs. B must be nearly finished with our evening tea. Would you like to come and help me lay the table young man?"

He glanced for permission at his father and, finding it granted, trotted along after her in search of the nuns simple crockery.

The sprightly waltz came to an end just as they exited, and another, much more measured and pastoral, took it's place. She knew he was going to offer her his hand before it happened. It all seemed so deliberate, this entire afternoon. Shelagh sent a small, shrewd, teasingly grateful prayer heavenward as she assented; clasping her future husband's hand as he drew her closer.

They swayed in silence for a few minutes, slowly, just resting in one another's quiet presence, shoring one another up after a long day.

Closer and closer he led her to him; his hand still set very properly on her waist. She rested her head against the wool of his jacket and the weight of his hand transferred without hesitation to the middle of her spine. Oh, this was perfection, comfort, like some kind of wordless communion. The simultaneous feel and sound of his heartbeat in her ear, and the warm anchoring ballast of his palm through her red cardigan. She was completely at peace.

He'd never thought that a piece of classical music would ever be too short. This one definitely was. The music's dreamy rhythm came to an end and the record continued to spin, silently, needle in the very last groove, imitating the couple at the center of the carpet. She looked up at him, realizing that part of the atmosphere had changed and her cheeks pinked at how long it took her to realize what was different. His eyes spoke his inward amusement at this and he slowly let her step back, only then reaching for the off switch.

Shelagh's thoughts had finally caught up with her heart and she motioned to the couch. They sat very close indeed. Her promise to herself to try to become more physically comfortable with Patrick was going splendidly, for today at least. She felt absolutely at ease as he raised his arm over her head to shelter around her shoulders. A glass clinked somewhere behind them, and Shelagh belatedly realized that Timothy and Sister Julienne must have been setting the table in full view of their decidedly un-waltz-like dance for several minutes now. She blushed hard and threw a glance toward the tinkling glass sound, locking eyes with the woman who had been her mentor, mother and friend for such a long time now. It must have only been for a second, but the pride and encouragement bestowed in that single held glance as Sister Julienne righted a fallen glass would be something Shelagh would treasure in every year to come.

The blush on her cheeks was now just a glow of happiness as she turned back and settled a fraction closer into Patrick's side.

"I hope Timothy doesn't break anything." He said a touch nervously.

"Well he didn't break my toes, after all."

He smiled. "Should I ask about the dancing?"

Shelagh bit her lip. She retrieved the little leaflet from her pocket, now neatly folded, though it's still visible creases belied it's previous mistreatment, and handed it to him.

He stared down at it for such a long moment she began to be concerned. Finally he spoke, rather sadly:

"Mrs. Burton."

"Who?"

He set the little pamphlet beside him on the small table and looked over at her, a paternal guilt written in his eyes. "Mrs. Burton gave birth to twins the night of the start-of-term meeting. I missed the whole thing. Timothy said it was no big deal, but I wish I'd known." Then with a heavy sigh he confessed: "I feel like I keep letting him down, and that's the last thing I ever want to do."

Shelagh frowned, commiserating. "You've been doing your absolute best, Patrick. Anyone can see that. I've seen that all along; and believed in you. Though I sometimes remember praying that you would ask us for more help. No one is meant to raise children alone, after all." She mused.

He was touched to know how long she had cared for him, loving him purely, without even realizing she was. "Was your father better at it than me?"

"I should think not." She shook her head at him, "and anyways, he had help."

"I told you we moved to Edinburgh when I was eight?" He nodded. "My father let a lovely townhouse in Albany Street; which, at the time, I just assumed came with the grumpy housekeeper Mrs. McClagon."

She giggled quietly. "She was quite the battleaxe, not unlike Sister Evangelina. She got so angry when I would stain my school frocks. And there was Da's law-partner Hamilton, whom my father fondly referred to as 'Oinks."

Patrick laughed out loud as she went on. "In fact, I don't even remember now whether Hamilton was his surname or his given name. He called Da 'Fish' instead of Finlay."

Patrick looked utterly mystified.

She bit her lip swallowing a smile and added his mystified face to her ever-growing mental tally of her favorite things about her fiance.

"They were old school chums." She explained, having forgotten just how strange that would sound to someone who hadn't known the two men. "And, well, school nicknames do tend to stick. Just ask Chummy."

"Did you have one?"

"Oh, no." She giggled, knowing he what he was after. This man really became the most incorrigible flirt when you agreed to marry him.

"I think Shelagh was short enough for the other girls. He started me at a real girl's grammar soon after we arrived; and I was very excited, as I'd always been taught by my mother before. But I was quite quiet at school. I had a one or two good chums, but mostly I found my teachers fascinating. I loved to learn. Still do really."

"I know." He agreed. It was one of the things he'd always loved about her, even before he'd known he loved her. "You're always the first to volunteer to train for all the newest medical advances. Made me rather proud of you, in fact."

She nodded bashfully, accepting his praise. "My father was my best teacher though; because he spoke to me as an equal."

His eyes encouraged her to continue.

"He was among the best of men, and to me he was the only best man. A commanding presence, and very much the gentlemen his family had wanted him to be. He was the second son of a second son of a man who had made his fortune at the end of the great Enlightenment, and was therefore expected by his family to distinguish himself in a respectful occupation, which he did as a barrister. His move to Aberdeen to marry my mother was quite the scandal apparently."

"I think he was a bit of a frustrated philosopher, an idealist, almost like he'd been born a hundred years too late. He enjoyed his work on an intellectual level, and went on endlessly about justice; but I cannot remember him ever mentioning to me a specific case he had defended. It was my mother who had loved people: their stories and their lives."

"And you're a bit of both I gather."

She looked up and returned his gentle smile in affirmation. "I like to think so."

"He would walk me up Calton Hill to show me the unfinished monuments and tell me the myths of the ancient greeks as if they were his closest friends. He gave up on this a bit when I started asking impertinent questions about why Zeus wanted so many wives and how exactly Heracles got to be half god and half mortal and said we would pick it back up when I was older."

Patrick chuckled. "Timothy does that as well, but I've always said that he was born asking questions."

"Well, at least we'll never be bored."

"That's for certain."

Speak of the devil and he shall arise; or, Shelagh thought, maybe arise was too graceful a word as Timothy rushed around the couch, nearly tripping over his own gangly legs. She winced, leaning forward, unconsciously placing her hand on Patrick's knee. But he didn't fall, and righted himself quickly, again pulling up the wayward sock to it's proper place. Shelagh noted with a smile that despite being very much a boy, he would soon be well on his way to becoming a man. She felt her fiancé agree with unspoken observation as he covered her hand with his own and clasped it with a gentle squeeze.

"Table's laid! And Dad, Sister Julienne even had me go cut some", very carefully he proceeded with the new word he'd just learned, "Crysan-themums to put in a vase." He sobered when he spotted the dance brochure on the table and looked to Shelagh, pulling his face as far back under his tawny fringe as he could manage. "Is he mad?"

Patrick answered. "No, Timothy. I'm not." Then with a wry smile and a look to his future wife; accompanied by another little squeeze of her hand; "I'm just going to try harder to make it to your school meetings."

"_...nor had they waited_

_For many moments, ere their ears were sated_

_With a faint breath of music, which ev'n then_

_Fill'd out its voice, and died away again._

_Within a little space again it gave_

_Its airy swellings, with a gentle wave,_

_To light-hung leaves, in smoothest echoes breaking_

_Through copse-clad vallies,—-ere their death, o'er-taking_

_The surgy murmurs of the lonely sea."_

_Book I_


	4. Chapter 3: Poesy By Moonlight

It was not the first time a baby had been born in Doctor Turner's green MG Magnette, and it certainly wouldn't be the last.

* * *

Mrs. Elias Penning had gone into labor rather suddenly three weeks before she was due and Shelagh responded with even more than her usual alacrity, running for Jenny Lee's bedroom almost as soon as she replaced the telephone in it's cradle. Her cherry cardigan fluttered behind her up the stairs as she struggled to put it on after snatching it from the back of the chair. A casual witness would not have noticed an unusual amount of alarm in the young midwife's actions, but Shelagh felt like a bucket of ice had been emptied over her head the second she had recognized the voice over the receiver.

She knocked briskly and then stuck her head in the door without waiting. "Jenny." She hissed. It's one of those last tenement families. Mrs. Penning's just called three weeks early! She's in quite a state. I must go."

Jenny's round eyes had snapped open at the word tenement and she threw back the covers while reaching for her simple dressing gown, knowing exactly what she needed to do.

Shelagh was astride her bike and pedaling through the damp Poplar streets only seven minutes after she'd hung up on the distraught woman. She chastened herself for not having predicted this. For not being over-prepared. While it was true that Mimi Penning had delivered her first little girl two weeks early; second children were not usually so eager. She pedaled even harder then, irrationally determined somehow to make up the time nature had subtracted. Her front wheel sprayed crystal drops of moonlight in every direction about her as she sped through it's in the black puddles that littered the uneven pavement.

The smell of the tenement buildings greeted you long before their decrepit shadow ever loomed large overhead. They were technically condemned, and so were immediately deemed unsuitable for a home delivery. The families were systematically being rehoused and very few were left. Mrs. Penning was booked in for a bed at the Maternity home for a week complete on either side of her due date. This was supposed to be sufficient.

She heard Mimi's cries echo around the abandoned courtyard as she rode in. The woman must have been screaming for some time and yet no friendly lights winked help or support in any of the neighboring flats. Shelagh shuddered. Mimi was most likely alone, and terrified.

Shelagh remembered this woman's first labor like it was yesterday instead of nearly five years ago. Thirty hours of agony. Mimi had passed out of fatigue before even greeting her perfect, pink little daughter. Shelagh and the then quite new Trixie had felt so miserable for her. All alone with her husband working out at sea. Patrick had been there during the middle of it, and had been called away to a partial abruption during the absolute worst portion. She remembered seeing his face utterly torn in two between his patient and an obvious emergency for the thousandth time, yet it always looked as acutely horrible as the very first. He was an incredibly devoted man, and she couldn't have been more honored by his attention to her.

Her bike was up against the dirty wall next to the once-red phonebooth and she took the crumbling stairs two at a time, wondering how on earth she'd get Mimi down them with the state she was in. There was no way in heaven or on earth they could deliver the baby here. Thank goodness for small mercies she only lived on the second floor.

The door wasn't all the way shut, but Shelagh very much doubted the broken hinge would have allowed it to in any case. Carefully she wedged it fully open with nearby brick and went inside.

"Mimi?!" She called through the half light provided by the full moon, but it was not Mimi who answered. For a second, and in a fit of fantasy, Shelagh thought she was seeing an angel. A small ethereally pale figure appeared at the end of the hall. It let out half of a whimper and she suddenly realized who it was: Mimi's little girl, in an obviously too-thin nightgown, trembling not for the October chill, but with fright and worry.

As softly and calmly as humanly possible she moved towards the girl. "Abigail?"

"N-n-n-urse." The girl's brown curls shook around her china saucer eyes with each tiny stammer.

The midwife nodded, stooping to the child's height. She took off her red cardigan and helped Abigail put it on, rubbing to warm her wee arms through the candy colored wool. She held eye contact as she tried to reach through the cold fog of terror surrounding the little one.

"Abigail, my name is Shelagh. Do you remember me from Mummy's doctor appointments?"

The mop of chestnut ringlets bounced slightly up and down in the affirmative, so Shelagh took her softly by the hand; it was like ice. She rubbed it warm between both of her palms. The tiny girl could easily have gone into shock as her mother lay right in the next room, she thought as a familiar sadness crept into the fringes of her consciousness. No one should live like this.

She stood then, and was about to ask where her mummy was, but an agonized wail from the sitting room answered her question. The girl's soft hazel eyes went absolutely circular in abject horror.

"M-mummy won't stop."

"Abigail, I'm going to help your Mummy, but I need your help too. Can you be very very brave for me?" She offered the little girl her hand again; interweaving the five smaller fingers with her own.

* * *

After what seemed like an age, the sound of the familiar MG motor rumbled it's way into Shelagh's ears. In the tense stillness between contractions; she heard Mimi sigh in relief. The Doctor was here.

Shelagh felt inwardly selfish that her immediate thought was that she desperately needed to see his face, just to find an equilibrium, even as an agonized woman clung to her left arm in far more dire need of his skill. Abigail now clung to her other side, sat upon her hip and supported by her other arm. The little one was not coping as well as she'd hoped, still trembling, but was at least out of danger from shock now.

His worn shoes thumped in sequence and she could hear that he was also taking the stairs two at a time. It thrilled her like nothing else in the entire world every time he ran for the sake of a patient. The absoluteness with which he devoted himself to them was the best sort overwhelming.

She leaned back and could see directly down the hallway as he appeared. He met her eyes, reassuring both of them momentarily, then cast his own to the side, down to where the car stood idle, then back up to meet her clear blue gaze once more. She understood him at once. The ambulance wasn't coming, for Lord knows what reason.

Breathing deeply, Shelagh felt Abigail's fingers fist tighter in her collar. She shifted the little girl a touch higher on her hip.

It was up to them.

Smiling briskly at her now two patients, she stepped into the hall towards him, for some semblance of privacy. Whispering so as not to alarm the girl, "She's technically still stage 1, Doctor. But there's no telling when she'll cross."

Darkening eyes spoke for him as he considered the surroundings. They would need to risk it. Absolutely anywhere was preferable to here.

And so Mimi Penning fought her way down the stairs and into his car admirably, supported by her doctor. Shelagh followed with Abigail on one hip and her heavy brown bag.

"Nurse!" Mimi called hysterically. Her waters had broken almost the very moment she had settled on the rear seat.

Shelagh quickly opened the front door, put the bag on the floor and Abigail on the seat; pausing for a small quiet moment as she sat her in the car to place a gentle hand on her pale cheek and meet her eyes. She kissed the wee girl's forehead softly, praying for the Lord to give all of them strength through this endless night.

The engine roared fully to life once more. She retreated to the back seat with the expectant mother, the clean towels, and blanket which Patrick had retrieved from the boot; and they were on their way.

* * *

"Nearly there, Mrs Penning."

"Nearly there." Doctor Turner had been saying over and over as he drove. First softer and lower, as if he was talking to himself, but the words had now begun to gain volume with each repetition.

Shelagh could see that they were now, actually very close to the Maternity Home, just around the corner really, but she could also see that they were not going to make it.

And worse, there was something wrong.

The edge in his voice was now gaining in agitation as well as volume. "Really nearly there now Mrs. Penning!"

But the midwife in the back seat did not hear him at all. Her entire being was focused into one thought.

"Doctor. Stop. Now."

At her abnormally sharp tone, he immediately did as she commanded, then turned to glance at her with wildly confused eyes.

There was then a tiny perfect moment of stillness between them, where she glimpsed his utter trust in her and gained strength from it, and he saw her need for him and grew calmer with it. They exhaled simultaneously.

"Patrick." She barely mouthed the word and she saw him swallow hard, because if level-headed Sister Bernadette, the prize midwife of Nonnatus, was worried; then he should be quite nervous indeed.

The engine shut off immediately and he was out and opening the door behind her before Mimi could hitch another keening sob. Another contraction was about to, as Chummy often said, 'get it's boots on.'

Calmly, Shelagh leaned forward on her knees, making sure the distracted woman heard her. "Mimi, you must not move at all. Or push. Even a little. I know it's all you want to do, but you musnt't." Her eyes were so like Abigail's, the same in color and shape, and at the current moment, fear.

She turned, and spoke lowly to her colleague, her partner. "He's been presenting brow ahead all along, and I thought he'd correct himself, as is usual, but his entire face is visible now. She's already not in ideal position, Doctor, and far from a good location; but this baby is very determined to come out right now."

He only to glanced under the towel over Mimi's bent knees before he quickly threw his large frame around the back of the car, opened the boot and grabbed the forceps out of his bag as fast as he could manage.

Shelagh opened the front door to position herself backwards over the seat to assist as she heard Patrick's calming tone informing Mimi what he needed to do, and for her to do and she was confronted with their fourth passenger. During the drive Abigail had wedged herself in under the dashboard, curled up on the floor next to Shelagh's medical bag with her little arms wrapped tightly around her knees. The girl looked a bit calmer now, or so she thought as she climbed in, bracing herself against Mimi's stomach, preparing for the particularly jarring screams that nearly always accompanied a slow delivery like this.

Abigail knew nothing of this; and her mother's changeover from agonized groans to an acute, painful cry; somehow sent her exhausted little body over the edge. She unfolded from under the dash with alarming speed, wailing incoherently, trying to throw herself over the leather seat and get to her mother, who was now sobbing and gasping.

This could not happen. Patrick needed to concentrate. Mimi needed to be absolutely still. This baby's neck would not be injured or broken. It wouldn't; because Shelagh was not going to let it end that way.

She replaced the pressure she was exerting low on Mimi's engorged belly by one of the laboring mother's own hands, pushing hard on it and locking eyes momentarily with the woman, who somehow amid the excruciating pain understood the midwife's instruction. Shelagh then put her face as level and close with Abigail's as she dared, placed her hand gently but deliberately in the middle of her small back, and rubbed up and down, again and again, comforting her.

"Abigail. Abby. Look. Watch me Abby."

She reached over the seat and took one of Mimi's hands, holding it firmly as the woman squeezed it with all her might. Abby quieted, and stared. "Now you hold my hand Abby. Take it, squeeze very hard, and Mummy will feel both of us cheering her on."

The offered hand was accepted eagerly. As both Penning girls concentrated on Shelagh's hands in their own, the midwife accepted their pain, breathed it in, and released it up to heaven in a silent fervent prayer for healing.

She turned to the little girl, who still had large tears running in constant streams. "Would you like to hear a little story?"

Her answer; a nod, shook a few salty drops loose from her round red cheeks, and their wetness landed on the back of Shelagh's wrist.

"Good."

She breathed in, closed her eyes, and suddenly she was at that round mahogany dining table once again, sat upon a chair stacked with atlases, in the company of her once-shining knights. The memory of a clear strong voice mingled through the years with her own in the present as she recited the familiar tale:

_"Once upon a time, in a far-away land, there lived a beautiful young princess. She had shining gold hair and clear blue eyes more vivid than the seas of paradise itself. But she was very unhappy, for she was the captive of an evil witch, with scraggly gray hair and a long hooked nose."_

Despite being very busy indeed keeping his patients alive, Patrick spared the thought that he honestly wouldn't have believed what was happening if he hadn't witnessed it himself. The little girl was enthralled, and it even seemed to be distracting Mimi, for both mother and baby's racing heartbeats were now steady. Shelagh went on:

_"The witch kept her locked in a castle on a cliff that overlooked the great blue-green sea, and the princess sat by her window every day watching it sparkle in the sun. She longed to go and splash in it's depths, to feel the coolness of the water swish in between her fingers and toes, and maybe meet with new friends. She had never had a real friend before. She'd sewn one once: a shiny black silk pig friend with a lovely curly tail, out of one of the old witches ripped dresses; but the witch had found it and thrown it out of the window. It fell down, down, down until the sea below caught it up in its soft foamy waves. Now, the great blue-green sea had never seen anything like this toy, and so delivered it as a gift to the sea king. This particular sea king was, in fact, what we humans might call a swordfish. He was big and kind and silver-coloured with a rather daft looking brown moustache underneath his long sharp snout. Legend held that his strong fins could carry him twice as fast as any sailing ship and higher out of the waves than any other fish could dream to jump. He examined his new present, but could not make heads or curly little tails of it. Now the sea king had many special powers, and so he enchanted the toy, bringing it to life, and asked it to tell its tale. The hardy black pig answered him. "I am called Hammy, Your Majesty, and I am a pig. I belong to a lonely captive princess. She watches the sea every day, and wishes nothing more than to swim in the cool waves and taste its salty waters. As her only friend, I beg for your help to release her from the witch's castle." The sea king considered this request for a long while, but only asked a single question: "How brave an animal is a 'pig' meant to be? For if you are not afraid; I will help you rescue your friend." The pig answered immediately. "I am very afraid, Your Majesty, but that is what makes me very brave." And so the king was very happy to help, for the answer was correct..."_

She paused here because with a final great groan, Mimi's son had just been brought safely into the world.

As Patrick wrapped the infant in a towel and handed it in to rest on its mother's heaving chest, Shelagh smiled and finished the story: the most important part.

_"...because, Abigail, the king knew that being very brave indeed isn't about not feeling afraid, it is about not letting the fear stop you from doing what is right. As he had promised, the swordfish called up all manner of sea creatures to help rescue the little princess, which they did very handily, and the girl and her friend lived happily at the seaside forever after."_

* * *

Nurse Jenny Lee looked a saviour on the level of Jesus Christ himself meeting them surrounded by the light above the front door of Kenilworth Row. Mrs. Penning and the baby in her arms were bundled into a wheelchair and taken inside. Abigail trotted along behind, recovered now, but still never letting her mother out of her sight for a second. Patrick went to wash up a bit from their ordeal and Shelagh stepped into his office to look up the information they had collected on Mimi's sister-in-law; her closest relative, and to write down a few essential notes from the birth. Taking the paper with her, she made her way back down the hall to the recovery ward, where she met with her colleagues again, just outside the door. Peering around their backs, she saw what they were smiling about. All three of their new arrivals were already fast asleep; brave little Abigail was curled up in a chair she had pulled right up to the bassinet, one arm outstretched up into it. Her little fingers were cupped gently around those of her new baby brother.

Jenny spoke softly behind her, still smiling. "Mother, baby and sister are all perfectly healthy, just exhausted. As you see." Then, upon seeing the card in Shelagh's hands, asked; "Is that her sister's address?"

Shelagh handed the paper to her friend and fellow midwife, who consequently shooed both she and her fiance towards the door saying that she would send for the family in a few hours and that she'd leave word that nobody was to call for either of them until at least the next afternoon.

With that, they found themselves again under the halo of amber light just outside the maternity home.

Patrick leaned against the car, put both hands over his face and heaved the loudest sigh Shelagh had heard since Sister Evangelina had come home after delivering a set of twin girls to a mother who already had a robust young set of twin boys. She had compared it to being the referee at a boxing match.

Dragging his fingers down over his eyes to rest heavily on his cheeks, he regarded his partner. He envied her ceaseless composure sometimes. "Well that was certainly one for the history books, eh Nurse?"

Eyebrows raised, she nodded. "Quite so, Doctor."

He tossed a glance over his shoulder, then back to her. "I'd drive you home, but I don't think the car is quite clean enough for that right now." Shelagh smiled broadly at the joke. Now that all was well she was actually rather exhilarated.

"Will you walk me then Doctor? My bike is still down at the tenements." She shivered a bit, and before her thoughts even reached the level of awareness that, in the now fading adrenaline, she was freezing without the cardigan she'd given up to Abigail, Patrick was covering her with his dear warm old overcoat.

She gathered its warmth up to her chin, breathing in the wonderful smell and atmosphere inside, this coat that had been witness to so much, and thanked him.

They turned, beginning to walk slowly in the direction of Nonnatus House.

"Don't thank me. You were amazing." He shook his head slightly, yet again in disbelief of her particular brand of perfection. "You're always amazing."

She returned his praise with levity, as ever, somehow afraid that the moment she fully absorbed the force of his fascination with her she might very well burst into a thousand pieces. "I'm going to remind you of that when we quarrel Patrick."

"We're going to quarrel, are we?" He said, mocking skepticism.

"Oh, a good deal I should think."

"What about?"

"Well probably your ties for a start." She looked sideways at him with another wry grin. "Goodness, am I just noticing this one now?"

His loud answering laugh echoed through the now dry streets as the glow of the moon waned and softened overhead, in favor of the coming morning.

* * *

Far too soon they were at the bottom of the steep concrete steps leading up to Nonnatus' red front entrance and she said as much as she took off his lovely old coat, holding it open for him as he had done for her. He shrugged it on and turned back to her, straightening it on his shoulders.

"Our walks home will be the same walk soon enough. And then we can talk as far into the night as you ever wish to. Together." There was a far-away look in his eye as he said it, and she felt miles away from him, though it was last thing she wanted right now. Not that she knew what exactly she wanted right now.

She reached out for him, needing to make sure of him. Her hand smoothed down the wayward lapel of his coat, flattening it, righting it, as her fingertips ghosted over the even stitches. Then she let go, somewhat hesitantly, hand falling back to her side. He was right here with her now, and after such an ordeal and at this moment she was just so full, so heavy with something she didn't quite understand. He must leave. But why?

"Goodnight Shelagh." He said softly before turning to walk away, and her conflicted spirit wrought itself in two.

Surprising him, and especially herself, she grabbed the same lapel back, fingers fisted tightly in the wool, her body speaking out her yearnings before her mouth could form around them.

"Don't go yet, Patrick." She whispered, so sure of everything and nothing all at once. "I don't want you to go."

He gazed down at her, so gently, as he wrapped her hand up in his own. She could see it in his eyes now; how reluctant he had been to leave.

"No. I won't go yet." The words were unnecessary, but they were softly uttered just the same. He sat down on the second step from the bottom and held the wonderful coat open on one side, an invitation, beckoning her to join him.

In yet another surprising turn of events; she didn't hesitate for a second.

His arms settled about her crossed ones when she sat, both holding the coat around her and warming her. Inwardly thrilled as she relaxed into him, Patrick thanked the God he was beginning to see a reason for once again for the chance just to be close to this astounding woman. Without thinking, his lips pressed against the delicate shell of her nearby ear; and then because he couldn't think why not, bestowed another whispered kiss onto her temple, just above the frame of her glasses. She stiffened slightly in his arms, her fingers noticeably tightening into the wool of his sleeve, and for an apprehensive second he thought he'd done something wrong. Instead, she then leaned back farther into him, resting that very same ear on his shoulder, and tucked her head in towards his neck.

His pounding heartbeat slackened as he relaxed and it calmed her too, lulled her with it's steady cadence. When he spoke, and she could feel as well as hear it.

"Your father was an excellent storyteller Shelagh."

"How did y…?" She began, incredulous.

"A pig and a fish?" He laughed lightly, lowering his head to murmur into her hair. "That's not much of a leap dear."

"I suppose not." She sighed and settled in closer against his side once more, facing more forward now, following his gaze as he began to watch the indigo blue of pre-dawn hovering in the distant sky.

After the most comfortable few minutes of silence either of them had experienced for some time, she spoke again, tilting her head up slightly. "You're almost right. That was one of Hammy's stories originally though, probably, to begin with. His always turned out to be more about him than anyone else."

"You really called your father's best friend Hammy?" Patrick challenged her, still slightly dubious.

"Oh yes." She grinned.

"And he helped to raise you?"

The grin widened. "Well that very much depends on how you define 'help', Patrick. He was often rather more like a naughty playmate than the stern moral compass one might expect of one's godfather. He must have made rather a lousy barrister too, as much time as he spent at the card table with my father and egging me on to play pranks on Mrs. McClagon, poor woman. It was never anything too destructive, of course, but I'm sure we still caused her a good deal of trouble."

Patrick gasped rather stagily. "Playing _pranks_? _You_, Sister Bernadette? Well now, _I never_."

Chuckling at his mock-outrage, she futility slapped his arm over her own shoulder, "I was ten! And not a nun! And I'm not one now, so shh!" she teased.

She looked back out to the rising dawn, now the same fierce shade of pink she could feel in her own cheeks. "A particular favorite of my fathers' was the time I came home with three hedgehogs in my schoolbag, and Hamilton convinced me to put them in the icebox just as McClagon the Dragon was returning from market."

"Live hedgehogs?"

"Oh, very much alive. I vividly remember hiding under the kitchen stairs terrified that they were going to freeze to death. Mrs. McClagon always bought a full basket of eggs, and when she opened the door the little spiny bundles rolled out neatly into her brown basket; which, after a particularly satisfying scream, was then thrown all the way across the kitchen and spilled over the head of my unfortunate accomplice." She gave in to her own amusement for a moment, giggling happily at the memory.

"Da always laughed before he could stop himself. I think this time was especially difficult for him to hold his composure long enough to apologize for us and sternly deliver our consequences. Hammy's ruined suit was deemed to be punishment enough, and I had to spend my week's pocket money on new eggs."

She could feel Patrick's silent laughter, and her face hurt for grinning so widely. "We must have made quite a sight; me trying to keep three rather shell-shocked hedgehogs from crawling out of my pockets, and my tall, yolk-covered dandy of a godfather."

The grin fell slightly as she admitted something, and Patrick heard not sadness but, for the only time since that fateful day he'd first kissed her palm, guilt in her tone. "Hammy and I were always good chums. He was family. That is, until the war turned everything upside down."

Her fiancé sighed again, another one of those deep, exhausted sighs. He pressed a gentle kiss to the crown of her head; now glowing with the golden light beginning to tinge the sky, and thought fleetingly of the captive princess from her story. "The war changed everything, everywhere, my darling." He whispered softly, not wanting to break the spell of the happy memory she had shared.

Shelagh could not quite describe how much she loved that new endearment; mere words could not reach its incandescence. They sat quietly again, hearts full, and ensconced in contentment. She never would have thought this night, begun so anxiously, would have ended in such a pure serenity.

They had both witnessed endless dawns over Poplar while on-duty; but like the rather shorter list of deliveries performed in his hapless green car, this one would have to be marked as a favorite.

* * *

"_There they discours'd upon the fragile bar_

_That keeps us from our homes ethereal;_

_And what our duties there: to nightly call_

_Vesper, the beauty-crest of summer weather;_

_To summon all the downiest clouds together_

_For the sun's purple couch; to emulate_

_In ministring the potent rule of fate_

_With speed of fire-tailed exhalations;_

_To tint her pallid cheek with bloom, who cons_

_Sweet poesy by moonlight...In times long past; to sit with them, and talk_

_Of all the chances in their earthly walk;_

_Comparing, joyfully, their plenteous stores_

_Of happiness, to when upon the moors,_

_Benighted, close they huddled from the cold,_

_And shar'd their famish'd scrips."_

_Book I_


	5. Interlude: The Butterfly Dress

_And now at once, adventuresome, I send_  
_My herald thought into a wilderness:_  
_There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress_  
_My uncertain path with green, that I may speed_  
_Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed._

_Book 1_

* * *

The bells jingled cheerily overhead as the petite blonde stepped silently up from the street and around the heavy mahogany door. The shopgirl tidying a display looked up at the chiming sound and returned the new customer's small smile invitingly, unknowingly putting her at ease. What would have been a small draper's shop fifty years ago now held a selection of ready-made dresses and accessories. Nurse Franklin would have classed this as a 'boutique', she thought, and the exotic-ness of the word made her lips press together into a small smile. Shelagh could still count the number of proper shops she'd been into since leaving the Order on one hand.

One, in Poplar High Street, quite recently, where she'd bought a replacement red cardigan. Then several others, the day the younger midwives had taken her out in Oxford Street just after she'd returned from St. Anne's, with Chummy staying behind to man the phones. "Not a thing in those places to fit me anyways!" she'd said gaily while shoving them all out the door. Jane had taken her hand as they went down the steps and squeezed it, making sure she knew that her nervousness about the overwhelming nature of this upheaval in her life was understood and accepted. The whirlwind afternoon had taken her to Harrod's, Selfridges and the like: it had been entirely exhausting, which was a surprise, but quite beneficial to her nonexistent wardrobe in any case. They were such wonderful friends.

She had the fleeting wish she could shop like Trixie and Jenny, who absolutely trove through the mass of choices seemingly instantly and knew exactly what would suit their figures. The girls were so knowledgeable about fashion, and after ten years as a nun, the years before that spent mostly in a nurse's uniform, and then even before that in a school uniform or dresses chosen for her by others, Shelagh was rather out of her depth.

Today, however, was a different affair. She had walked into this shop knowing exactly what she wanted, and why. She had seen the dress through the window, and had a sudden, unexpected new experience – seeing something in a shop, and knowing, in some strange predestined way, it was put there just for you.

* * *

Oh, remembering those school dresses did make her terribly happy. Her gymslip days had been full of damp Scottish weather, the greenness of Edinburgh in the spring, the bite of its winter winds and, best of all, the verdant forbidden wilderness of Queen's Street Gardens in the late summer. It had been her favorite place, with its beautiful roses and topiary and the rich smell of the grass and earth. How could one stay away?

The gates were locked as a matter of course; but she was perfectly sure some of father's clients had keys. And if they could go in, then why couldn't she? Their house was just as nice and only just off Queen's Street anyways. She peered through the black iron bars, knocking her straw boater hat back, perilously close to falling off the burnished gold crown of her bobbed hair.

She couldn't see a soul. Nobody seemed to be enjoying this bright afternoon, which wasn't terribly odd, as people rarely were this close to tea-time. Not that she'd ever been shooed out, mind you. Well, almost never. There was that one time with the tiny vicious terriers who had destroyed her school hat. Oh, the Dragon had been so angry with her that day; she could still see the woman's wrinkled face turning scarlet as Hammy outright laughed in the background while fishing out his wallet from his pocket. He'd given her the money to replace it before her father noticed in return for "regaling him with the story of her daring escape from the small white beasts of terror."

She could almost smell the sunshine on the breeze as it moved the branches overhead and gently shuffled through her bright hair as her father's fingers did every morning when she kissed him goodbye. It would be so wrong, like a sin against God himself, to ignore his creation on such a beautiful day; so into the jungle she went.

Clambering the fence was second nature to her now – unlike the first time, when her heart had been beating right the way out of her chest in exhilaration at breaking such a rule. She knew she'd have to stop doing this someday; as she neared fourteen it seemed more and more childish to jump over the fence. Maybe one of Da's clients would give her a key, she thought distractedly as she stashed her hat and school-bag out of sight in a gorse bush. Or maybe Hammy could get a hold of one somehow? She'd ask them at dinner.

Shelagh had had no inkling then that this was to be the last time she would nearly rip her dress on the iron spikes of the fence; no idea that this was to be the last day she could reasonably call herself a child; no notion that nearly every house on the square at that moment held a group of adults huddled around a wireless. Out of doors, there was still innocence.

Fingertips lingered on broad green leafy faces and their razor thin edges itched pleasantly against her elbows as she passed through the thickest bit of the woodland beyond the fence. Her feet were snatched out from underneath her suddenly as she tripped on a root, tumbling head over foot through the last stand of bushes and out onto the lush manicured lawn.

One palm firmly planted in the damp grass, she raised her head and let out a relieved giggle when she realized she hadn't been hurt; then flopped back to the ground to lay in the sun a quiet moment before hauling herself up and heading in search of adventure.

* * *

Grey eyebrows shot up over dark fiery green eyes into an appraising and annoyed expression Shelagh was entirely too used to. "What is this, young lady?" She was motioning to the large, rather obvious grass and dirt stain on the blue wool.

She locked eyes with Hammy, who had peeked his head out of Da's study on the other side of the foyer when he heard her come in. They sparkled, daring her.

"It is a school frock," she shot back to the housekeeper with as much insouciance as she could muster, and stuck her hands defiantly into said frock's capacious front pockets. The left hand rested empty, but the right fiddled nervously with a small matchbox. It currently contained an iridescent emerald beetle Shelagh was planning to let live in the glass jar on her windowsill, having not been able to bear the thought of this insect's shining elegance becoming dinner for some bird.

"And just what has it got on it?"

She suppressed an outright grin at the wicked look Hammy was throwing over the old woman's shoulder, awaiting her comeback. Much more defiantly even than she felt, she spoke. "The world is an imperfect place, Mrs. McClagon; dirt does happen occasionally."

Shelagh winced internally at the memory of her younger self, but wondered now how similar she and the older woman must have been all along; stubborn and determined, each one sure they knew best.

Her godfather had shut the door rather quickly, retreating into the study, but his outburst of laughter could still clearly be heard through it. She giggled to herself and moved to walk up the stairs, but an arm clad in black was held up blocking her path. She rolled her eyes, stood back, sighed heavily and looked up, awaiting the lecture she knew by heart.

"Miss Shelagh. I have had about as much as I can take from you lately. You need to grow up. To respect what you have, not to mention your elders." She paused and a touch of sadness entered her voice as she continued. "Much more will expected of you as you mature, young lady. Especially now that-" She ended her speech abruptly, catching the adolescent off guard.

Shelagh felt a little chastened, as usual, but more than that, curious. There was obviously something not being said. "Now? What do you mean now? What's happened?"

"War."

A new voice from behind her stated with a low, depressed vehemence. Her father had obviously walked up into the house sometime during Mrs. McClagon's lecture.

"As of this evening, unless there is some miracle, The United Kingdom will be at war."

She whirled around. There had been rumors. She had heard adults everywhere murmuring about it for months now. War was a word spoken in hushed tones around children, and she realized why as it echoed strongly through the house. The word ran like ice in her blood, chilling her; but the sadness and resignation she met with in her father's expression froze her heart and limbs completely. Words were only words, and thus more easily explained away; but the expression of his deep sorrow was concrete, it had no other meaning. He looked so old. More tired than she had ever seen him, and it frightened her in a way she'd never known before.

He sensed her fear and strode quickly to her, kneeling to wrap her up in his strong arms. She found herself sobbing fearfully into his shoulder, clinging to him, and felt him release a few half-choked sobs of his own, not outright crying like his child, but allowing himself the comfort of his daughter's arms. Finlay's emotional overflow in this moment was less about the war itself, the fighting it would bring him to, and much, much more about what it was about to do to his beautiful child. The unfairness of what Shelagh was about to go through. The same as he had gone through before, what seemed like an age ago. The sudden, shocking loss of innocence. He could deal with pain, with any amount of trauma, but he could not hold back his tears for the harsh reality that was about to tarnish his only remaining treasure.

After a few quiet minutes; he father leaned back and wiped a lingering tear from her cheek with his thumb, lingering on its rosy apple, drinking in each tiny detail of her face. "Come with me, little fish." He opened the study door and ushered her in as he addressed its current occupant.

"Oinks, Out."

A command, not a request, which was readily obeyed.

* * *

He paced once back and forth in front of the fireplace. She watched him silently, from her favorite seat in his high backed oxblood chair, already certain what he was about to tell her. His embrace had had an edge of desperation to it, like he was savoring her, as if he was not going to have many more opportunities to hold her. She knew; she had held her mother like that once. He was going to fight this war, like he had fought the first one. She was already somehow resigned to it, because there was no other option.

"You see…" He began as he turned towards her, but faltered at the sight of his daughter sitting so primly in his deep red leather chair, hands folded in her lap, looking very much the young lady that he'd heard his housekeeper accuse her of not being. She was no longer the small child he held in his mind's eye, but waited here in front of him, almost grown, with his wife's incisive azure eyes and petite, yet sturdy frame. The passage of time was marveled at for a moment, before he began again, this time with bold certainty.

"I've accepted my old captaincy. I am expected in London next week."

His daughter nodded slightly, eyes wide, but no longer frightened.

"You understand why I must go, Shelagh?"

"Yes, Da."

His strong gaze pressed her to explain her reasoning. He needed to know she truly understood.

"Because it is the right thing to do? And what justice demands? And…" she repeated his mantra by heart as she had from her earliest days "…we must, in all things to all people: act justly, love mercifully and show humility." She shrugged slightly. "Justice will be served if you fight. So you must go." It was that simple.

Her father smiled upon her lovingly. "That is correct."

He crossed the room, kneeled in front of her, and she threw herself back into his arms. He gathered her into his lap and they sat together in the large comfortable chair, Shelagh's head resting on his shoulder as her delicate little fingers traced the paisley designs on his silk necktie.

"Dada?" She said after a long while.

"Yes, little fish?"

"I'm proud of you. For going, I mean; but I will miss you terribly."

"Oh, Shelagh." He breathed and held her tighter. "And I will miss you even more, my girl. I have no expectation that this oppression will be easily or quickly beaten down. It tears at me that I may not be here to see you transform into the dedicated young woman I so hope you will be. Like your mother was."

She curled up just a little bit more, and shut her eyes, resting, listening to her father's calming words, trying to etch them into her memory for the long lonely days ahead.

"This fight would have made her so angry Shelagh," She could hear the smile in his voice. "and it was what I first loved her for; her unflinching intolerance towards injustice. It's why we met. Why you," he said, tapping lightly on the tip of his daughter's nose, "even exist. The fight for justice made you possible."

He sighed deeply, as he always did when remembering Mam. "I read her name before I even saw her, you know. She was on the list of defendants, and I was in the gallery observing. It caught my eye because of its Greek-ness; it was ancient and mythic. Phoebe: The mother of gods, such an odd name for a woman with a decidedly Irish surname. That may have been that, but then I heard it read aloud by the bailiff, and she stood up. She was like a living flame, Shelagh. Not just her hair, but she defended her mates with such passion, there was this undeniable charisma in her ire. Despite the fact that I'd come to expect this kind of display from suffragists, I was hopelessly entranced."

"Your mother could not be satisfied unless she was fighting alongside people, helping build them up, and loving them in doing so. In the same way, I could not live with myself now unless I fight for what is right; and when the time comes, Shelagh, you will find your own ways to do the same."

He turned his head and pressed his lips to her forehead, half in her hair, a lingering kiss. Father and daughter sat in silence then, knowing the future would find them soon enough.

* * *

She had only remembered the little yellow box when she went up to bed; it was very late. She had stayed up with Da and Hammy to listen to the prime minister's speech on the wireless.

It fell out of her pocket as she removed her dress, and she felt a tinge of regret as she picked it up, understanding now that she'd interfered in something she shouldn't have. The pretty bug would have been better off, and possibly still alive, had she left it alone. Maybe its beauty was meant for another creature's dinner, and not for sitting in the sun on her windowsill.

The birds would have to find their meals elsewhere. The glass jar would remain empty.

She went to the window, opened it up and tipped the little still body from the box down into the darkness below, then shut it, but not without noticing how bright the street still was. Lights shone through the darkness from every parlor window up and down the street, for no grown-up would sleep much tonight. The evening mist carried the sallow effulgence of their lamps with it tonight, a heavy tense cloud of sulfur-colored light hanging low over the world in tremulous apprehension. They'd all lost something today, and Shelagh was afraid they were all about to lose much more.

* * *

Another Shelagh, one now excessively familiar with the fight her father had once spoken of, approached the young shop assistant a little shyly. "Excuse me Miss, but the dress in the front window; may I possibly have a look at it?"

"Oh! Yes, of course." The girl's dark eyes lit up with a welcoming brightness as she revealed the chatty and gregarious nature she'd been hired for while turning and gliding towards the front. Shelagh found herself rather envying the fluency of her step in those high heels. She'd yet to master them. "It is rather unique isn't it? It's the last one like that, as we sold the others during the summer. Mr. Lewellyn wanted it put right at the back since it's out of season now, but his wife and I thought it was better up in the window, being seen. It's like a whole display all by itself. All those colors; and you know, it'd be lovely for this time of year with a cardigan over it." The girl mused excitedly.

Shelagh smiled the whole way back to catch the bus, peeking surreptitiously into the box once or twice. It was perfect. She couldn't wait for Sunday afternoon.

She ran her fingers over the colors inked into the soft cotton, enjoying the detail and artistry in the print. How much her life had changed from that dead green beetle in the matchbox; how much she had changed. All the things she had lost; and yet finding the butterfly print dress had helped remind her of something quite profound.

As much as she had ever lost, she had gained so much more.


	6. Chapter 4: Such Companionship To Wear

It had rained all morning, and looked as if it meant to go on. The unceasing patter of drops on the large black umbrella was having a decidedly un-calming effect. Shelagh stood under the dripping eaves, breathing steadily in defiance of both her nerves and the cadence of the rat-a-tat rain.

This was ridiculous, she thought, shifting her weight onto her heels. She had complete control, ten years of silence and meditation should have prepared her to put paid to this kind of nervous energy. After all, she had delivered babies under much more stressful circumstances than this! For goodness' sake, it was only an afternoon tea.

She had waved off a hovering Trixie, who was on call and sitting 'within sight' of the the telephone, as she hollered last minute advice and offers to 'add a coat or two of mascara' to frame her eyes, and shut the door with a brisk laugh, setting off on foot. It wasn't until she had started walking that the uncertainty started to germinate within her. There was nothing to doubt, she rationalized, nothing to worry about, and yet her pulse's determination to match the galloping raindrops still betrayed her.

The green front door was opened politely at her knock, and the sight of her betrothed's dear half-worried expression unintentionally made her feel a margin more steady. A shared nervousness was far better than a lonely one.

She raised her eyebrows slightly, summoning a tiny reassuring smile for his benefit, which was returned somewhat amplified. She dramatically huffed a little breath out, relaxing her shoulders. He grinned, understanding, and she knew one thing for certain again. Regardless of everything else, she and Patrick would be just fine. Actually, maybe it was two things, she thought, closing and giving the sopping umbrella a good shake; as wonderful as this man was, he honestly didn't own a proper tie.

She stepped into the hall as he held the door, and a very shipshape and scrubbed up Timothy instantly shot up from his place on the couch in the sitting room and exclaimed "You're here!", backtracking into a proper greeting with a little pink spread over his cheeks when he realized his impertinence. Shelagh smiled at him, finally relaxed. Timothy always made her feel comfortable, everything was so simple with him; so easy.

She didn't see anyone else and shot a glance at Patrick.

"She's in the kitchen. Wanted to make sure I didn't make a hash of the tea service for you." was his whispered response to her silent question.

Another nervous grin swallowed as she looked down, unbuttoning her standard deep navy trench coat. Patrick stood at her back ready to receive it.

As it came away, the full skirt of her dress was freed, and though she'd only worn one of the ruffled petticoats Jenny had offered, it puffed and swished like a dream.

Better than any dream, though, was the reaction it received.

"Wow!"

Timothy's exclamation did no justice to his awed expression; he immediately raced to her, caught her hand up in his and fairly dragged her to the couch. He bounced down beside her and immediately began to peer closely at the patterned fabric of her full skirt.

She beamed at Timothy as, unobserved by either of them, Patrick gawped at her. Shelagh was so full of love for his son, and the delight she took in him had always compounded and increased his own passion for her. But this, this thoughtful exchange of little gifts and shared interests that went on between the two of them was just beyond anything he had ever expected. His new wife cherished his son's attention unreservedly, as his son did hers, and it was almost too perfect a grace to bear.

This smiling tableau was to be Mrs. Parker's first sight of her grandson's future mother. As she was about to bustle into the room with the tea tray, mouthing off good-naturedly at her son-in-law about the deplorable state of his biscuit tin, its full impact did not escape her. The tall, slender, striking woman paused in the doorway, taking in the pleasant sight: any residual anxiety she had held about the future success of this newly formed family shook instantly from her mind like raindrops from a closing umbrella.

For Elinor Parker knew all about Shelagh's quiet, secluded origins already. She had had all the Poplar gossip she could swallow from her housekeeper, who happened to be the sister of her son-in-law's housekeeper. The Misses Kirk visited one another regularly, and shared many of their marathons of scandalized defamation over apple tarts in her kitchen. By now, Sister Bernadette was a very familiar name.

She saw her grandson look up quite excitedly from his examination of the colorful print.

"Do you think these look like real types of butterflies? I'm going to go get my insect book!"

Without waiting for an answer or any comment at all, Timothy flew loudly up the stairs, leaving the betrothed couple smiling after him. Elinor cleared her throat softly as she entered, placing the tray on the low table in front of Shelagh.

"Hello, there."

The girl shot up instantly, and Patrick politely made the necessary introductions.

"But please do call me Ellie. I'm not decrepit enough to be called Mrs. Parker quite yet."

* * *

The tea was a lovely affair, a better afternoon hadn't been had by any of them in quite a while; save Timothy, whose teacher's wife had brought in a chocolate cake for Mr. Thomassen's birthday the previous Friday. He thought Shelagh's butterfly dress tied with that easily and sat by her for ages as they found and sounded out the latin names of the many species of butterflies printed in the fabric.

The adults' conversation revolved, as usual, around stories of medical cases. Ellie had always been rather fascinated by them, having volunteered a bit in medical administration during the war, and in Shelagh, she had found a new source for the interesting, touching and often hilarious stories. Shelagh saw where Timothy had gotten at least some of his vigour and lust for life; his grandmother was intelligent and vivacious, and seemed quite young actually, for a grandmother. She was sure she'd have to get the story on that later from one or the other of the Turner boys.

As Ellie prepared to leave, having commissioned Timothy as her official umbrella chauffeur to the bus stop, she cautioned her new friend not to pay any mind to Patrick's teasing: "I never do; besides that, you are quite perfect just as you are, my dear." Also absolutely never to ever allow him in the kitchen if she "wanted to keep the fire brigade and the health inspectors from swarming the place."

Patrick narrowed his eyes at her, at which the light brown haired woman laughed gaily. He offered yet again to drive her home, but Ellie waved him off with a tut and an exasperated "Honestly!" before following Timothy out into the rain. A last, small, knowing smile was sent from Ellie to Shelagh, standing in the doorway with her son-in-law, before they set off down the street. As they did she called back a parting jab.

"And sort out that biscuit tin, Patrick! It's a disgrace to Britain."

Shelagh and the retreating Timothy shared a little glance and laugh at his expense. She understood now that, in the wake of all their sorrow, Mrs. Parker must have been the glue that held the Turners and the Parkers together.

As the large black umbrella bobbed out of sight around the corner, Patrick turned to her and courteously motioned her back inside before shutting out the rain once more. Immediately Shelagh stooped to begin clearing the low table. She picked up a half filled tea cup, stacking it upon a plate of crumbs, and headed in the direction of the kitchen sideboard. She didn't need to do that, Patrick thought as he found himself at odds with a woman and a tea service in his sitting room for the second time today.

"Oh, I can..."

A single smirk cuts off his sentence in the middle. "Nonsense, Doctor." her lips soften into a pleasant smile. "We will do it together."

He got her message, just like he had gotten Ellie's.

With the clink of china as a soundtrack, Shelagh edged the conversation toward the topic she had become most curious about.

"Mrs. Pa- I mean Ellie, she's quite- active, for a grandmother."

She didn't fool him. "You mean she's young." He laughed a bit then at her caught out expression and shrugged as he passed her another small plate.

"I suppose she is. She was married to her first husband quite young, before he went off to the first world war. In fact, she lost a husband to each war." He considered more quietly. "Her second died in the Blitz."

Shelagh drew in a horrified breath. "Oh, how sad."

Patrick met her eyes solemnly. "Yes." His eyes flicked to the side and then back to meet hers.

"There was something she said once, about losing people." He mused after a lingering pause. There was sadness in his expression, but his voice remained hopeful. "There's always someone left to love. That was what she told me. When her husbands died- her children were there. And when-" He stopped.

Shelagh reached out and lightly touched his elbow, just under the grey rolled-up shirtsleeve, then stepped back. She understood the snag in his thoughts. For as much as her own heart twisted every time she thought of what this family had been through, his agony must be almost unimaginable. Her small touch freed him and he blinked, continuing, "-She had Timothy and me left. And her boys too." The last phrase brought a brightness to his eyes. "I suppose you'll meet them, Timothy's uncles, I mean, whenever they visit next."

She smiled, and asked about his half-brothers.

"They're quite young too, as you might imagine. One is training as a surgeon; the other, last I heard, writes radio plays."

He tells her, grinning all the while, of their last visit: about how Timothy so obviously worships them. These are the happiest stories of the Turner family's recent past; and she thinks, in the wake of tragedy, and as few in number as they are now, they have clung together admirably. Patrick watches his future wife, and delights at her interest, as each smile and each answered question knits her further into the family he treasures. Then unexpectedly, he sees her grow quiet. She retreats from him, stepping away and pretending to re-busy herself with the abandoned cleaning. There is a flash of pain in her eyes that cuts a stark contrast against the small smile she still feigns. He wants to ask, to help if he can.

"Penny for them?"

Shelagh starts, scrambling her thoughts. She should have known he'd catch her out, she is an open book to him. "Oh, I'm just being silly." She admitted, still holding back.

He smiled encouragingly. "I like silly."

"It's nothing."

The utterly dubious look in his eyes in response to her demurral is both compelling and maddening. They both know she cannot hide from him.

Shelagh sighed.

"It's just- I wish I had family to share with you." She watched his face, and could tell his concern, but in this moment whether it is with what she is expressing or the very fact that she is expressing it, she cannot tell. "I feel like you are giving me so much, and Ellie is so wonderful and..." she quiets then and speaks shyly to the window "...I don't have anybody."

Before she knows it, he's crossed the room to her, taken another empty dish of crumbs from of her hand, placed it aside, and taken both of her hands in his, pressing them tightly, willing her to understand him. He smiles down at her. "You're right."

She blinks twice in response, suddenly confused.

"That_ is_ silly." He explained. "But only for the reason that you all by yourself- just you, Shelagh- are more than I could ever have dreamed to get." He raises her left hand and echoes a kiss over her engagement ring, securing all his promises once more. Her face softens at his praise, but he can sense that doubt still lingers.

"Do you realize what a gift you are to me? To us?" He knows he needs to somehow prove these words, to give her an example, or she'll never conscience them. She's far too modest. He searches for something to tell her, something that will encompass her beauty and her loving kindness and just a fraction of how in awe of her he is. As he looks down at their joined hands, it stares him directly in the face.

"Your dress."

It was exactly what she needed to hear. He met her eyes once more and they sparkled at him, overflowing with joy and dawning comprehension. One hand came up to gently cup her cheek; he held it with a palpable sense of her preciousness, wishing she could fully feel how much he adored her.

"As much as I know you bought it for Timothy, and how much it meant to him, it means far more to me, because of the way you've always loved him so generously."

Shelagh's eyes were beginning to tear, but what came next was her undoing. She leaned into the caress of his hand on her jaw as he spoke again.

"And Timothy loves you so much, you know." He looked upon her in wonder. "I'd say he loves you more than I love you, but that would be inconceivable."

He was so focused on proving her value that it was only the sudden feeling of a tear in his palm that prompted a shocking recollection: he'd never actually said those words out loud before. It seemed impossible, but there it was, a fact, like the truth of her incalculable worth.

One more tear slips out as she swallows thickly and beams at him. She's as taken by surprise as he is, but as always, recovers quickly. Her response is delivered with all the urgency she can muster, and she presses his hand against her cheek with her own.

"And I love you. I love both of you so very much."

The look of wonder on his face is unparalleled, the disbelief in it mixed with astonishment. He cannot believe that this is the first time they have shared these words.

"I can't believe..."He starts to apologize and then seems to to change his mind, instead offering an explanation. "This is going to sound ridiculous, but in my head I add that to every sentence. To hear it out loud..."

"I know what you mean, Patrick. It occurs to me again how I love you..." She hesitated, this new conversational paradigm a thing of both joy and what feels like risk, before adding "...every time I see you."

He breathed in sharply at her words, the unspoken length of her love for him somehow both understood and still surprising. His head shook, dissipating the cloud of bewildered ecstasy that had just settled upon him. It was replaced with a tone of gentle self-determination as he clasped both of her small hands in his again.

"It will never do justice to what I truly feel for you, but as often as I think it, you should hear it."

She scoffs good naturedly at how over-the-top that sounds, but her sparkling eyes tell him the truth. She needs to hear it; she wouldn't admit it now, but she does. His promise is one easily kept, and so he begins delivering on it immediately.

"Shall we finish clearing the tea, darling? I love you."

Shelagh utterly dissolved with laughter at his teasing, so everything he said to her for the next ten minutes was punctuated thus, and though ridiculous after few repetitions, the happiness that little phrase brought with it made both of them rather giddy.

"I love you, Shelagh. Can you spot the last spoon anywhere?"

Her giggles fill up the small room, and he thinks he would sacrifice anything he'd ever had to keep her this happy forever. He watches his fiancee in a new light; it has some kind of new sharpness, a clarity now, despite the gloomy weather outside. She glides about the room, her full skirt swishing past furnishings, flashing and folding, the butterflies soaring and fluttering along. He loves that she's enjoying such a small thing, because he has noticed it too. A look of endearment and a silent conversation telegraphs between them. She knows he is watching, and blushes a little at her own perceived folly, though not making any excuses for it. Shelagh is beyond excusing her happiness today and, she thinks, possibly forever. She questions him silently, asking - not for permission, exactly. Maybe it is empathy she seeks?

He smiles wistfully, "It's been so long since a dress like that swished about in here like that."

Then with an added edge of flirtation he winks at her. "I rather love it, is all."

Round blue eyes fill with both compassion and happiness. He looks around searching for something to do with his unoccupied hands, now that the tea tray and its accompanying china have all been cleared. He settles for habit, and offers her a Henley, in something of a celebration for their declarations. She visibly relaxes as he hands her the lit cigarette and they sit down together on the couch. Her shoulders fall from their normal postural perfection, and yet he can still see an edge of sadness. Patrick thinks it must be memories of her family; they had left that thought unresolved.

So he leans forward slightly and catches her eye, communicating his empathy. She blinks a slow acceptance of it, still not quite used to someone knowing her as well as he does. To have someone understand not just her spirit, but her past - and, even more, to communicate about it - is almost entirely new; save, of course, for Sister Julienne, her sisters had always tended towards supportive silence.

She exhales a light cloud that hovers above her, wisps of grey which disappear into nothingness as they float up towards the whiteness of the ceiling. He watches her, patient, to wait for her response. The way she smokes should be illegal, he concludes to himself at one point, and is a little taken aback by his own thoughts, and stuffs them quickly backwards, not quite ready for that particular direction.

Her eyes are shut as she begins, brown lashes resting on pale cheeks, remembering a bright and hopeful morning not so very long ago. "That first day we smoked together-" her eyes blink open at him and she hands the cigarette back to him. "The memory was a happy one, it was the first reminder of my father that didn't bring me any pain. You gave me that, Patrick." She pauses, offering him a thin-lipped smile. "But right now... today I only feel how much I would have wanted you to meet him."

He nodded sadly, extinguishing the last of the cigarette, leaned into the cushion at his back and attempted to change the subject. "What about your godfather? What became of him?"

He knew immediately that he'd succeeded in altering her train of thought, but also that it was not an improvement, for her face only became more solemn and her gaze now turned to the floor.

"I don't know. I haven't seen him since just before I turned sixteen."

He grimaced at himself for his clumsiness. "Shelagh, I'm sorry I..."

"No. Patrick," she cut his apology off gently. "You weren't to know." She still considered it rather wonderful that he wanted to know all about her, but now, in addition, felt that maybe these were things he should know. She bit her lip in thoughtful silence.

He could sense that she did want to speak, but he wasn't sure how to begin and could see that she was even less certain. "Can I make you more tea, darling? The kettle is still hot."

She nodded gratefully, understanding that he was interested in continuing the conversation, but was giving her a bit of needed space first.

He returned minutes later laden with a cup and its saucer in each hand, though not from the painted china service they had just been using- but instead from the serviceable white stoneware settings that were a staple of the Turner household. She spotted this and a thrill rose inside her to discover that he no longer thought of her as a guest in his home, but a member of it. The evidence of it emboldened her, and as he sat beside her again, she found it easy to begin.

"When my father left for the war, I remained in Edinburgh, under the joint care of his housekeeper and my godfather. I could have been sent to live with a great-aunt somewhere in Northern Ireland- but I begged to be allowed to stay and finish school. Deep down, though, I think I feared that if I left Scotland I would never return. I was right about that I suppose, in the end."

She spun the handle of her teacup to the correct side with one finger, picked it up and sipped slowly at the warm familiar liquid, drinking in the scent along with it.

"And everything was all right, Well-" she cocked her head "-as all right as they could be in the tumult of war. When I turned fourteen I began volunteering as a junior nurse. Nursing came as natural to me as breathing, and it made me feel so useful. I found such wonderful purpose in it. As that year wore on, however, I began to worry about my godfather."

Patrick's brow furrowed then, as she had expected.

"You see, I had no way of knowing, but the first world war had fundamentally unsettled him," she began delicately. "It irrevocably shocked his system, and he became one of those men who feigned that nothing mattered. He made free with other people's lives and money because he had been through hell, and after that, nothing much could touch him. If something did touch him, I think he feared the haven he'd built for himself out of half full brandy glasses would shatter and there would be no stopping the hell from returning. That everything would be lost."

Patrick understood her meaning; he had seen toll that war could take upon a body, manifesting both physically and mentally. Sister Julienne had fled from the horrors of one war only to find herself striving to defy her own past while serving in a second. Fred, like many, hid himself in the good memories of service, in jokes, and in the few moments of levity between those long stretches of darkness. He himself had relied entirely on the thought of just managing to return home to the first woman he had ever called a fiancee, and all the promises he'd made her. Shelagh, he was learning, had neither seen a battlefield nor held its scars upon her skin; yet, so young, had suddenly been forced to uphold their oppressive weight.

"He withdrew. He would disappear and come back at all hours, sometimes after days of being absent, and offer no explanation. When I pressed him, or even teased him, he wouldn't defend himself- or even yell. The smiling benefactor of my childhood was now a silent guest in our house." She looked up at him then, and shrugged slightly, belying the repressed pain that was so obvious in the depth of her eyes. Patrick's heart ached for her, compassion rose within him as fleeting images of comrades and patients with similar stories flashed in his memory.

"But I had no notion of shell-shock then, and no idea what to do about it so, alone as I was, I ignored it and simply took on more responsibility."

"Because you loved him." He offered without a hint of wariness.

She pressed her lips together, affirming his conclusion, and looking down into the tea on her lap. "In my immaturity I idolized him; I loved him like only a young girl can love someone, like they are this completely perfect specimen of humanity." Turning towards Patrick, still somewhat hesitant to meet his gaze, she explained. "He had kept my father from the sharp edge of grief and told me beautiful stories and bought me lovely presents. He was my father exactly, except without the cloud of sadness left by my mother's absence. I did love him, Patrick. I loved him with the devotion of a child, and he let me down."

There was strength behind the sadness in her eyes as they met his; she managed a small smile as she continued.

"I have thought of him much since then; and forgiven him. He was so young during the first war- I cannot even imagine what he had seen to cause him that intense fear. It worsened too, as the war went on; and by the spring after I turned fifteen I was desperate." her empty hand smoothed down her already perfectly arranged skirt. "He had taken to locking himself in my father's study for hours on end, I can only assume he was drinking himself unconscious." Pausing, she swallowed hard and knit her eyebrows together, suppressing the urge to stop talking completely.

"I put my head down and was determined to make it through until my father came home. The thought that he would come back to be with me was my only source of hope. Those were the days I would stand behind his desk and surround myself with smoke from the Henleys he'd left behind. I would hang a cloud in the room and breathe in the scent of my father's presence, letting it fill me up. It was like a ghost of his embrace, and it made me feel less alone."

"Oh Shelagh. I'm so sorry." Patrick ached to comfort her somehow, but settled for moving a little nearer to her on the sofa, needing to be close to her.

"I stayed hopeful. I made do." she told him grimly, looking down once more. "That is, until the day the telegram arrived."

Her eyes faced the wallpaper, but could not focus on it. Her consciousness bored through into the past, deep into her own recollection: focusing only to what the eyes have previously seen, the present forgotten in light of the memory's continued power over her.

Even the white hallway had looked blue that evening as she arrived home, like the house was in mourning. Her footsteps echoed on the tiles, as they always had, but a chilly foreboding hung in the damp air. An envelope lay on the table, its jagged edges jutted upwards into the air as if in defense of its delivered missive. The telegram itself lay on the floor under the table, half-folded, hiding- its sallow color only adding to its cowardice.

"It was addressed to me, but he had already opened it."

She had dropped her things and rushed to it, this tiny slip of paper that held her entire future in a few inked words. As their meaning sank in, Shelagh felt every hope sink with them. The telegram was lead in her palm and she clutched it with both hands, unable to stop reading it over and over, praying that somehow, if she just looked at it one more time, the words would change. But they were real, they would not change, she would carry their weight now. Another burden to bear.

"It's such an empty phrase, isn't it? Missing In Action."

She disappeared into the memory, untethered from the teacup in her hand, unaware of its chink as her body mechanically replaced it onto the saucer. Her voice did even not waver at first.

"My father had become a figure in someone's notebook. The fullness of who he was and what he was to me, reduced to a simple stark missive."

Her hand shook slightly. Thinking she might spill it, Patrick gently took the cup from her and placed it onto the table next to his empty one as he heard her continue, the clear soprano beginning to falter.

"My father was missing for over two years. He died in Oflag sometime during 1943. I wasn't notified until later the next year." Shelagh's eyes filled with hot tears, but she found herself unable to let them fall. She kept talking, finding that now she had started, merely speaking the words defied the overwhelming sadness. "It was so small, his existence. He was nothing. And I was nothing. I thought this wasn't supposed to happen. I wondered what I had done wrong."

The marble tile had been so cold against her face as she cried. She'd felt like a tiny speck against the whiteness of the floor as she clawed at it with small pale fingers, wishing it would envelop her, embrace her and crush her to nothing. There was no way to know how long she lay there weeping, trembling with fright. Her eyes finally opened on a raggedly drawn breath and she saw, sideways, a view of the darkening street outside through the still-open door, yellow lamps lit, as nobody passed. There was no one there.

"I was alone."

He couldn't take it anymore. "Shelagh," he called to her, as though she wasn't close enough to embrace. "Shelagh, stop. Please."

Finally unfixed from the memory at the ragged sound of his pleading; she swallowed thickly, the small motion just enough to release her welling teardrops to tumble out into space. Down they fell to splatter amongst the folds of butterflies. Had they been real butterflies the tears would have scattered them into the air, in a beautiful spiral mosaic of fluttering wings. A kaleidoscope of color would have surrounded and brightened the deepening gloom in the small parlor. But there was no movement, no sound, no color; only a new depth to Patrick's understanding of the woman he loved, stillborn in the wan light of early evening. He reached out and took her hand in both of his, holding it gently. She would never be alone again.

Shelagh wiped a tear from her lashes and placed her other hand on top of his, letting her fingers brush against his wrist. He looked at her again and knew that there was much more.

"I turned on Hamilton. I knew he was in the study. I knocked, I called him. I begged and he wouldn't come out. Then... well..."

A dark eyebrow quirked in response to her small secretive smile. "What?" Why on earth was she smiling right now?

"I got angry."

The mahogany barely vibrated under the furious fists of an adolescent girl, but that didn't stop her trying. She had let loose a torrent that could not be stopped, a tempest that would have to run its full course before it could be calmed. She could hear how ridiculous her childhood nickname for this villain sounded in her screams, but couldn't stop, there was too much to blame him for. Too much he was supposed to stop from happening.

"I raged at him. I had never felt anger like that before, like everything I had felt for two years was forcing its way out all at once. I beat on the door until I was exhausted and then sat there for hours, silent, and heard nothing back. I had an on shift with my volunteer nursing brigade and had to leave, but he was still there when I came back. Still locked into his own despair. It was pitiful. That was when I made a choice. Sitting in that hall, sunlight streaming into the windows, hoarse and out of tears to shed, I chose to get out."

Patrick was riveted now. He hadn't known how young she had left home, though it made complete sense now. "At fifteen?"

She nodded contemplatively. "I think I had been planning something since just after father left for the war. I mean, I had taken my school certificate already, though a few other girls had done that too, just to be certain to have it. I wasn't sure quite what I was planning, though, until a few weeks later."

There was a detached quality to the shame he saw in her expression. Almost like she wasn't as sorry as she wanted to be about what she was about to reveal.

"It came to me in anger, in a self-righteous fit that I have since repented. I had been rummaging in the study and come across some rather official looking papers, all crumpled up, that had obviously missed the flames they'd had been intended for." Her eyes dropped to her folded hands. "They were Hamilton's conscription papers. He'd simply ignored them, and since his recorded address was not ours..." Shelagh's hands clenched one another tightly "... apparently nobody was looking for him. He was using me, my trust, my father's hospitality, because he was a coward. I remember being unspeakably angry at him, but then I realized that this was my way out. Because Hammy was still technically a barrister," she shifted, bit her lower lip and refolded her fingers nervously, "...and I needed to be two years older than I was to go to London and train as a proper nurse."

She turned to him, met his eyes carefully, still not quite able to admit in plain words what she had done.

"Shelagh, you didn't." Not accusing, but astonished. When she said he had no idea, he obviously hadn't realized. But he should have guessed- he knew her strength. He reached out for her almost unconsciously, resting his hand on her shoulder. She leaned into his touch.

"Yes. I did." She was now fighting tears again, he could see it. "He forged me a whole new birth certificate, I never asked how, and I didn't turn him in. I-" she sniffed. "I mean I never could have turned him in, but he didn't know that. So he left, and I never saw him again."

Patrick ran his hand slowly, comfortingly, across to her opposite shoulder, opening his posture to her- offering an embrace. She hesitated now, unlike that night not so long ago on the cold Nonnatus steps, to enter into the comfort of his arms. She couldn't. She didn't feel as if she deserved it, and clenched her fists even tighter together in her lap.

"I lied to so many people. I placed application letters to three different London hospitals, and wrote a sister of one of my schoolmates who lived just north of the city asking to stay until I was assigned a place." Her fisted hands unclenched and smoothed down the unwrinkled skirt once more, Shelagh's gaze was directed into the inch of space between their knees and despite all her attempts at serenity, her voice still wavered.

"This career of mine, everything I've made for myself, everything God has given me, would not be at all, if not for him..." with that, she finally found enough desperation to look into his eyes, hoping she could bear whatever judgment she met with there. But all she found in their green depths was compassion. The relief made her gasp, and choke back a sob as she finished. "Oh, Patrick. I don't even know if he's still alive."

Shelagh cried; not hysterically, but her tears streamed down steadily and continually like the rain that still fell outside. She turned fully to Patrick and he wrapped both arms around her, pulling her as close as he possibly could. He pressed his lips into her hair and rocked her gently. After a few moments he pulled away slightly and wiped a thumb across one cheek, gathering up her tears. She blinked with surprise to note that he too, was crying. "You did what you thought you had to, darling." He murmured. "You were so young."

Patrick folded her back into his arms and leaned back into the sofa. She toed her shoes from her feet and pulled her knees into his lap, rested her head on his chest and let herself melt into his arms completely. Looking back on this rainy day, Shelagh would realize that it was this confession, these tears, that bound her completely to her husband. That long embrace had never truly ended, because it existed outside the physical. The intimacy of it was emotional. It was complete and unconditional trust.

They weren't sure if it was minutes or even hours later that they heard footsteps running up the front path. Timothy flung open the front door and raced through, pounding up the stairs, yelling about having to go to an emergency cubs meeting. Neither Patrick nor Shelagh moved or wanted to, though they were again aware that the rest of the world still existed around them.

He leaned back a little and kissed her forehead. She tightened her grip on one of his arms just slightly and smiled at him. She didn't want him to let her go. His eyes flicked to the stairs and then back to meet hers; he didn't mind if Timothy saw them. She managed a small smile and a shrug. She didn't mind either. They weren't doing anything wrong. In fact, they were doing something so very, intensely right. He returned her smile widely and pulled her in even closer with the arm that already rested on her waist. They were silent and comfortable as they lay back and listened to the steady cadence of the rain through the still open front door. A cool dampness spread through the room. After a while, she turned and propped her elbow on the back of the couch, eyes now dry and face devoid of tears. She still spoke very softly.

"It rained like this the day I left Scotland."

He said nothing, but moved to mirror her posture, letting her continue. The way she described it, he could tell she thought of this day often and felt its significance deeply.

"Mrs. McClagon wore a steel helmet all through the war; she kept the house running and pretended not to notice everything else. I envied her a little for that. I remember walking out the front door on my way to the train and as I said goodbye, I realized I was making eye contact with her for the first time in nearly two months. And she was crying. For me. It hit me like the train I was going to meet; that she had been there through everything, silently watching my struggles, caring for me with the quiet background steadiness I only learned about as a nun. She made me realize exactly what I was doing, the magnitude of the choice I had made in a fit of self-righteous fury. I left my suitcase on the pavement and for the first and last time I embraced her, and she held me.

"It was like a baptism, the afternoon rain and that dear tough woman's tears; it was my first glimpse into a world where people could be more than one thing at the same time."

Patrick took her hand once more and interwove their fingers. "You earned the maturity you were pretending."

She squeezed his hand. "Perhaps I did, though I didn't feel it then. I remember her whispering to me, trying to reassure me, 'It's all right, Shelagh. This is right. This is good.' she said over and over and over, standing on the marble step outside the house I had once thought so beautiful, but now only seemed a hollow cave."

And then there was only the sound of raindrops once more; that is, until Timothy clomped his way down the stairs, nearly as loudly as he had run up them, and poked his head into the sitting room.

"Dad, do you know where my hat is? It's not on the hook or on my bedroom floor. And yes I looked under the bed too."

Patrick sighed and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. The moment was obviously over now. Shelagh giggled at both of them and said she thought maybe she had seen it in the car as she'd walked up earlier. She leaned forward and slipped her shoes on without letting go of Patrick's hand. Her skirt swished around again as she turned and and pulled him up with her. When he stood she grinned up at him.

"I love you. Let's go find Timothy's hat."

* * *

_Stepping awfully,_

_The youth approach'd; oft turning his veil'd eye_

_Down sidelong aisles, and into niches old._

_And when, more near against the marble cold_

_He had touch'd his forehead, he began to thread_

_All courts and passages, where silence dead_

_Rous'd by his whispering footsteps murmured faint:_

_Till, weary, he sat down before the maw_

_Of a wide outlet, fathomless and dim_

_To wild uncertainty and shadows grim..._

_...The deadly feel of solitude: for lo!_

_He cannot see the heavens..._

_...But far from such companionship to wear_

_An unknown time, surcharg'd with grief, away,_

_Was now his lot. And must he patient stay,_

_Tracing fantastic figures with his spear?_

"_No!" exclaimed he, "why should I tarry here?"_

_Book II_

* * *

[Author's Notes]

*Oflag was the German prison camp reserved for Officers, as a Captain, Shelagh's father would have been interned there.

*I APOLOGIZE FOR HOW LONG THIS CHAPTER TOOK, but the rest of them are all planned (ish) and should be much more timely- or that's the current hope.


	7. Chapter 5: A Steady Splendour

It snuck up on her one day that, along with everything else, she'd learned his footsteps. Their cadence in the hall, their seemingly contradictory loping swiftness. In them, Shelagh simply heard _him_. So many details she had begun to see she already knew - facets of his nature that she hadn't recognized yet for what they were: pieces belonging to the whole that made up Dr. Patrick Turner.

As the autumn blurred into a haze between being Sister Bernadette and becoming Shelagh Turner, there was much to discover, about herself and, to a greater degree, about the man she had fallen in love with so unexpectedly. These myriad small revelations, like their relationship itself, were somehow both gradual and yet intensely striking.

She turned at the sound of his steps crossing the tile hallway, and as expected, the whole man appeared. He stood in the doorway, a pile of brown folders in the crook of his elbow and a pleasant yet sheepish expression spreading across his adorable weathered features.

"It's far too quiet in Sister Julienne's office," was the half-mumbled excuse he offered, sounding amusingly like a certain cub scout being reminded of unfinished schoolwork.

"By all means," she said cheerily, welcoming him, as she motioned to the empty work table in front of her.

His eyes lit up, then clouded with a hint of suspicion. "I'm not disturbing you?"

"What is there to disturb?" she scoffed lightly, brushing off whatever invasion of her solitude he was considering more important than his own distraction.

It was hardly a sacrifice, and in a way she knew he needed the company more than she relished the time alone. His loneliness was one of the things she had realized, had really discovered, recently. The outward hints of things gone uncared for, frayed trousers and lost buttons, were only symptoms of the gaping holes left in the seams of his life. Spaces of blankness and nothingness that he could never hope to mend himself, only unskillfully patch over by outings with Timothy and plates of fried bread. Silence was a treasure to her, and yet to the man she loved, it was unnerving. Silence, to Patrick, meant grief. Her engagement, and their resulting closeness, had fostered a new sense of clarity towards him, similar, in a way, to having put on her new spectacles. He held her focus now; he and Timothy, and when regarded in this new light, they were suddenly fathomable.

'I'm not doing much of consequence. Really, Patrick. Just keeping up with the sterilizing. We've had quite an active night here, followed by an equally busy morning- and we don't want Sister Evangelina accusing anyone of clamp thievery again."

The previously boyish grin turned knowing, smiling at her joke and silently teasing her for her assiduous nature with regard to supplies. Her thin tawny eyebrows rose in contest, both in defense of herself and accusation towards him of the exact same tendency in general. They stared daringly at one another until the tediously balanced tension snapped and dissolved into laughter- her light airy giggle mixing with his low rich tone.

Patrick sat and began to read through the new files from the clinic, flagged by midwives and nurses alike as possibly troubling or needing advice. Shelagh wondered over his unruly black fringe for a moment as he leaned forward, then turned back to her own task.

A comfortable silence reigned, broken only by occasional queries and musings over case files by Dr. Turner and the clink of steel against the autoclave. Shelagh shut it, allowing it to fill with searing steam and turned to lean her weight against counter.

He felt her eyes on him. He had always been able to do that. Even before they had an understanding, he'd always known when she was looking towards him, offering an explanation or looking for assistance. Her eyes had followed him for ages after the birth of the Carter twins, causing him to realize he never wanted her to look elsewhere. As he glanced up from his work and met their gaze, both blue and green eyes filled with comfort and happiness, exceedingly content, in this moment, just to be breathing the same air as the person they loved. He wondered aloud into the space between them, "How is it that I didn't know? How did either of us miss this? And for so long?"

A small smile quirked the left side of her mouth as she blushed slightly, rounding the now rosy apple of her cheek. "We weren't looking," she said contemplatively, then slightly more definitively; "Things tend to fall into place when you least expect it. At least- that's been my experience."

They hadn't spoken of her past since that day it rained. The opportunity simply had not presented itself, but Patrick could not deny that the wonderful openness with which they now interacted seemed to be a direct result of it. He looked at her expectantly as he rested both elbows on the table and asked which experiences those had been.

She clasped her hands thoughtfully in front of her, calling back into her memory for an example, and made to smooth down her habit. A habit that was no longer there. He saw it, and somehow understood. She marveled inwardly once again, upon catching herself. "It's so instinctive, yet there must be somewhere that these things have their origin. Somewhere in all the many days where these things click, becoming permanent."

"They go by unnoticed," he mused, thinking of all the times he had worked so closely with this woman, and had felt only admiration and friendship for her.

"Most of the time I think they do." She motioned vaguely between them. "It came on so gradually, so naturally- how could we have seen it before?"

They were silent for half of a moment, in thought, and then Patrick's eyes grew somehow greener with excitement, and she smiled widely at his sudden impish expression. "What is it?"

"But I remember seeing it, Shelagh. I do. I know when I began to love you. I remember the first time I drove home, thinking of you, pulled into a million directions."

Shelagh could only stare blankly at him. "Wh-when?" she stuttered.

"The day we lost the Kellys' little boy." he remarked seriously, eyes greying.

She knew immediately what he was speaking of. "You asked me to take tea with you."

"I did - because suddenly I had to know more about you. I was so drawn to you. I forgot myself, your habit and everything else and just wanted you to tell me everything you had ever thought or never spoken. That small contrary statement, Shelagh. That was all it took."

"I was already in the middle," she murmured after a moment.

A nod. "Which is why you said no."

She admired him for his understanding. "I remember when I first saw you, Patrick."

"I don't think I remember our meeting, darling. I'm sorry." He grimaced at himself and she chuckled, shaking her head slightly. "No, actually, I can't recall that either- though it was likely with a laboring mother in the room, so that's not too surprising."

He laughed obligingly, bemused.

"I meant- well, it's something I began to do as a young nurse. When I first was assigned at the London the scorn of the Matrons and arrogance of the surgeons made me very nervous. Especially as I was already lying to them every single day." He nodded in understanding.

"So I tried to really see them. To glimpse their humanity. To look for wee clues of how they could be caring or fumbling that most other people wouldn't notice or mind- well, I found it helpful. It made me trust them, the small glimpses of contradiction."

"-And it was the same with me?" he asked, unsure.

"It was. I was a bit wary of you before I knew you properly- you seemed so sure of yourself, so kind and handsome and popular with your patients..." Shelagh played idly with her fingers, remembering days she had avoided his gaze, still too damaged to trust anyone but God and Sister Julienne, but so determined in her new mission- to serve the women of Poplar. What trouble her soul had known then.

Patrick interrupted the dark train of her thoughts. "May I ask what changed your mind?"

She sighed softly, thoughts moving to a much happier memory. "I saw you once with Timothy, when he was just a tiny wee thing. His mother had stepped into the clinic, no doubt to look for you, and she'd stopped his pram outside. You were just walking up as I was coming out to erase the blackboard and change the dates." She smiled softly before continuing. "You nearly walked past him, but you turned around. You stopped and crouched down to have a proper wee conversation with him, calling him old chap and green bean and silly little names, and after that- I- I felt I knew you. Your gentleness convinced me that I could trust you."

He held her gaze for as long as he dared, pouring out every emotion- he was touched again by the rarity of their relationship. How long they had respected each other, laughed together and even shared tragedies: all before realizing their feelings. He saw the future stretch out once more, full of all the same things, and so much more.

She blushed deeply and broke their connection to cast a distracted gaze at her small wrist watch. "Oh!" she exclaimed lightly as she turned to open the autoclave, realizing she'd left it far longer than she had needed to. A dense pervasive cloud of steam billowed from the open lid; the water had nearly evaporated in her absent-mindedness.

"They'll be very sterile indeed, I take it?" he teased.

She turned just to wrinkle her nose at him, and then turned back into the cloud of escaping steam.

"I remember the first time I did this too," she mused aloud after a long moment.

"Oh yes?"

Shelagh hummed in affirmation. "I'd been scrubbing floors for a full month after I arrived in London, and was nearly beginning to despair of ever doing anything else, but of course I was diligent to my task. I thought I had to be twice as hard working- that I had to try doubly hard because I had so little practical experience. What I didn't realize was that, as a war-time volunteer, most of the other girls had just as little as I- or even less."

"And they didn't have your aptitude," Patrick tossed in rather absently; she blushed and stammered once more.

"W-well I wasn't perfect by any means. I was on the verge of losing my temper more times than I can count. I was constantly having what felt like a whole battalions of soldiers come through for visiting hours and ruin what I considered 'my' spotless corridors, which I found entirely exasperating."

She could still see her younger self, stood in the corner, fingers in her hair, mussing up the neat plaited bun underneath her starched cap, trying not to scream in frustration- and having no idea how little a concern mud on hospital floors would be to her in little over a year.

"I would catch myself about to whinge, but seeing the men comforting their injured comrades made me so ashamed. They had given so much, and there I was- dissatisfied with doing so little."

"You were nearly a child, Shelagh."

"Yes. I was, but they had no way of knowing that. Well- I say that, though there was a soldier who admitted his true age to me once, on his birthday, he'd faltered on how old he was. I can still see the grin on his face when I owned that I was a full two years younger than I claimed. He told me there were more boys than anyone would ever think lying about their ages. I went back to scrubbing floors with a renewed vigor- and for once, someone took notice."

His interest was piqued now. "Who?"

"Another nurse, Verena Hahn. She'd been there a year already and pointed my diligence out to a Matron, asking that I be assigned to help her. She was in charge of sterilizing. Rena is one of those people who tend to get what they want, so Matron reassigned me. It sounds odd, but I knew, the moment I met with my first batch of clean tools, that it was the job for me."

He grinned unseen behind her, be she could hear it in his voice. The teasing hidden within his genuine interest. "How's that?"

She breathed in deeply, placing another clamp on the fabric covered tray to cool. "I don't know, really. The steam has this wonderful clean humidity, have you ever noticed? And doctors rely on clean tools. The more perfectly clean each tool is, the closer a patient is to surviving. I realized I could stand in that room by myself, alone with my thoughts, and be helping every single person in the hospital do their job better." She realized herself then, blinking and tossing her head self-consciously. "I'm sorry, does that make any sense?"

He was silent, grinning widely into a folder, not hiding his amusement in the slightest. "More sense than you could ever know, my dear." He closed the file and set it aside, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands across his chest. "You've never mentioned a Nurse Hahn before. Was she a close friend?"

"I've never had a closer one in all my life. We even had a room together when we were training at The London just after the war. Trixie puts me in mind of her on occasion, because of her hair. Rena's golden curls would flash about and catch the light on the wards and all the soldiers would fawn and flirt, but she took absolutely no nonsense from them. I still think of her so fondly. As vivacious and brash as she could be, you'd never have met with anyone more unfailingly generous."

Shelagh turned as she voiced the last thought, wanting some air, and wiped a bit of steam from her temple. She stilled both hands in the pockets of her white, starched cotton apron momentarily and leaned against the edge of the table.

"We were like sisters," she reflected breathlessly, remembering how vivid their friendship had been, opposite souls knit together in shared service. "We talked constantly, never running out of subjects or handsome soldiers to gossip about. She knew how old, well I should say, young I was- and never told a soul. She guessed it once- and I just couldn't lie."

The room seem warmed by the happy memory as she smiled then, even if the true cause was the steam from the now open autoclave. Shelagh's small fingers fiddled in the cuff of her cherry red cardigan, unrolling a sleeve and tugging it down over one hand. She then pulled the sweater off completely, stepping forward as she did to hang it on a nearby chair. There was no point in pretending it was still cool enough in the room to wear it. Patrick, taking this gesture as a sort of permission, removed his suit jacket, heedlessly tossing it on the table next to him. He began to roll up his shirtsleeves, which Shelagh didn't blame him in the least for; but took the opportunity to return to her task, concentrating on the autoclave instead of- well, if the birth of the Carter twins had taught Shelagh anything, it was that Patrick Turner's forearms were extremely distracting. They set her off-balance in a way that she felt she shouldn't dwell upon for too long all at once. She was lightheaded enough with all the steam.

The rustling of papers on the table behind her signaled that he too had resumed his research and notetaking. Some moments later he sighed, and she heard the chair creak as he leaned back again, clearly too disquieted to continue with whatever he had been doing.

"So what happened to her? Rena, I mean." She could feel him verbally tiptoeing around the obvious question while restlessly shifting his chair once more. She could understand why, with the things he'd recently learned about her loved ones. "Did she- well, did you lose her also?" He asked hesitantly, chair legs scraping the tile as he fidgeted.

"Oh no Patrick- nothing so bad as that," she was quick to reassure him. "I never lost Rena in the sense that she's still, to my knowledge, very much alive and well. We exchanged letters until a few years after she left nursing and married, and then there was just so little left in common between us that the once close relationship just simply faded away."

"Oh." The chair was still. He wasn't sure how to respond to such a blunt summation. She'd presented yet another contradiction- a gloomy ending that didn't seem to trouble her.

"It's okay, Patrick," Shelagh tossed casually over her shoulder. "My happy memories of Rena far outweigh the sadness of our friendship's fading. We grew together, and then naturally, at some point, we grew apart. It was a wonderful time of my life, and thats how I'll always think of it. Rena and I always had a laugh. We had the unfortunate tendency of getting into terrible scrapes together, but somehow we always explained our way out of real trouble."

She registered a satisfied hum and a distractedly affectionate "I'll bet you did." from behind her and smiled to herself, remembering the days after the Blitz ended. As the Allied cause had gained momentum in the latter part of the war, so too had her confidence, her friendships and her career. She had made up her mind to learn everything she could in the hospital, about medicine of course, but also about life- and what life could be. She had laughed at times, been horrified and disgusted and angry at moments, and still others had touched her deeply. It had been her only glimpse of adolescence, albeit an adolescence warped by a constant and terrible sense of foreboding, of the world at war and the faint hope that lost somewhere in that dark cloud was her father, alive and well and making his way back to her. A shiver coursed her spine, despite the warm heavy air and so she released the dark cloud of memory to float away, re-busying herself with the now clean clamps.

The shiver had not gone unnoticed. Patrick had given up on his notes long ago, choosing instead to meditate upon a finer form- that of his lovely fiancee. The cardigan no longer hid her arms, and he'd just noted their small freckles. When she shivered, he saw gooseflesh pass between them and then, suddenly, dissipate back into their original delicately patterned porcelain smoothness.

Also, the steam from the sterilizer was doing maddening things with a few tendrils that had escaped from the hair twisted and pinned above it. They curled up with the steam just to taunt him. Tantalize him with their silent provocation. His fingers twitched. He wanted to touch them. Just to see if they were as soft as they looked. Or so he rationalized.

Belatedly, he noticed that he'd stood from his chair and stepped around the side of the table. Shelagh had not reacted to his movement in the slightest. She'd just begun to tell him a story, something about Rena and a Matron they'd nick-named 'The Lemon', but Patrick wasn't exactly listening.

He moved closer still. He'd apologize later, of course, and have her recount the anecdote to his full attention, but right now he was concentrating. Concentrating, very hard, on the back of his fiancee's neck.

One step closer. She would register any instant now how close he'd gotten. He wasn't even sure if she had realized he'd abandoned his notes at the table ages ago.

The moment she realized he was there, he knew it, because her story died away without another whisper. She just stopped talking mid-sentence, something seemingly taking precedence in her thoughts and overwhelming her ability to speak. He understood a little of what she was feeling.

She could sense him now. He was close. _What on earth was he doing?_ But it was too late.

_Oh._

He had reached up and gently pushed his finger into one of the tiny ringlets, pulled it down to her collar and watched with delight as it bounced back to its original shape, just as he had predicted it would. So he did it again. Just to be thorough.

Shelagh blushed hotly, swallowing hard. His fingers hadn't touched anything but her hair. She couldn't be completely sure she wanted him to, however, the idea fearlessly presented itself- , so somewhere in her muddled thoughts she must be longing for him to continue. The steam was filling her lungs and drowning out the air. The heat of it made things confusing; she had thought her cheeks were flushed already.

"Patrick?" she giggled breathily. He could hear her nervousness. "What are you doing?"

His fingers pulled another little curl, stretching it out, feeling it slip from their grasp and spring back to its former coil.

"Your hair curls in the steam." She could feel his breath on the back of her neck, and he saw another slight shiver run the length of her spine. "Just here."

He felt her breathing ease, only slightly, and she chuffed a little at his discovery. "Oh that. You should see it..." She stopped herself, biting her lip shut, realizing what she had been about to say about her hair in the bath would only have made this situation a good deal more tenuous than it already seemed to be. "...well," she swallowed, "...actually never mind."

But he didn't need to know what she'd been about to say, the mere thought of more steam than already swirled through the room was intoxicating. He was as close as he could be without actually pressing up against her, breathing in the steam over her shoulder. Not that he needed its warmth, however; he was already burning up, despite his rolled up shirtsleeves and casually loosened tie.

Shelagh attempted to push his closeness out of her mind momentarily, making herself used to it, finding that she enjoyed the feeling of safety. Patrick was like a wall at her back, a bastion of protection from the prying eyes and ears of Poplar. It was with this comforting thought that she leaned her head over the autoclave once more, bent on removing the last few sterilized tools before being thoroughly distracted by the person she could honestly call the biggest distraction of her young life.

One last thing had slipped Patrick's notice. Her neck. Well, her collar had been loosened from the start. That's what had started him on this dangerous track. Being able to gaze at the slender graceful curve of it as she bent over her work. He hadn't been able to properly catalouge it that awful day he'd examined her. But there was something else now. Something he'd only have seen from this very vantage point. Closer than anyone else had ever been.

Her flawless skin, save another freckle or two he'd just committed to memory, was absorbing the steam. He could see innumerable tiny dewy droplets clinging to its luminescence.

And before he even really thought about what effect he would cause, he'd already run a smooth fingertip down the side of her neck, from her hairline, following the curve almost to where it would become her shoulder.

CLANG.

Neither of them jumped at the sound. Shelagh didn't hear it. She hadn't even registered herself dropping the last clamp into the shallow steaming water. She was no longer aware of anything but him. His touch had scalded her.

Abstractly Patrick was on some level glad she wasn't facing him, because she would have seen him smirk slightly, and that probably would have interrupted this uh, interesting chain of events.

In the name of scientific inquiry, he drew another soft line with his index finger, slightly forward, until he ran into the perfect little obstacle that was her collarbone, then drew it back up the same way, ending just behind her ear.

Shelagh was trying to remember what she had been doing, saying or thinking just a second ago, but the fog of the steam, the tall heavy presence of temptation standing less than an inch from her and the burning trails down the side of her neck screamed in tandem for all of her focus.

As his fingertip neared her ear he heard her breath hitch, saw the tips of her ears flame red, and he had to shut his own eyes and swallow some very definite impulses that were currently forming in his brain. He'd certainly found something there. So there was some method in this madness after all. Some conclusion to be drawn from this dangerous experiment.

Pushing his luck, and placing a bet, he lowered his head slightly and blew gently across the area he'd just discovered.

Shelagh shivered in response, but not for any chill, it was more that her entire skin was trying to flip itself inside out. His breath rippled warm and heavy across her neck once more, past the underside of her chin, into the starched white collar of her uniform.

Which is when she started praying.

Begging might have been more the word, because though she was still wholly unsure of what was happening, Shelagh was completely certain she'd rather boil up into searing hot steam herself than have it stop. This man was either a miracle, or she had been missing out something quite miraculous for all of her life. Possibly it might have been both.

Any pondering upon that thought was quickly abandoned as a new sensation cascaded into her awareness. A soft yet incendiary touch, she sank into it, desiring it, acquiescing to it's perfection. The touch grew bolder, lingering, moving forward on her neck. In a distracted hazy moment of enlightenment, she registered the cause. He was kissing her neck, slowly impressing his lips into her flesh, once, twice, three times- following the soft flushed sinews underneath, discovering it.

The heavy wet air causes his lips to adhere slightly to the salt of her skin. The consequent soft, delicate stick as he peels them from her flesh is as if their skin, finally joined, is bonded and does not wish to part. Her breath seizes within her throat as they do finally come away; her own lips part as if to speak, and yet no air passes between them. Her words are stolen away by every other every inch of her as it sings to the vibration of his touch.

A mangled whisper follows in a voice that isn't even recognizable as her own.

"Oh, help."

It's somehow both an encouragement and a warning sign.

She leant fully backwards, trusting his support as her shoulders encountered his chest, and one of his hands came instantly to her waist to steady her. She felt him smile into her her shoulder and would have wanted to slap him if she could have mustered any emotion other than this all-consuming desire, any feeling other than his touch on her bare skin.

His caresses were emboldened, and if possible, more exquisite for their thorough slowness. He worshipped her with his attentions, trying to catch the precious drops of condensation between his lips like he was a man dying of thirst and she his only hope to quench it. She had learned to crave this new feeling so immediately. She was lost to it, and felt dizzied by it, light-headed, nearly to fainting from the quickening of her already short breath. Her heart felt as if it was trying to beat its way right out of her chest and she could feel against her shoulders that his was as well. Could he possibly be feeling what she was? Was this the madness that caused her so much work day after day? This overwhelming wave of need that crashed through her obliterating whatever fragments of thought she attempted to cling to?

She needed something to hold on to, some sort of ballast, and so moved her hand to clasp his where it rested lightly on her side. He took it, their fingers interlaced, and suddenly she had her anchor. It was like a life-preserver on a rolling sea. She was still dazed with the continued sensation of his touch, but with his hand steady in hers she felt the freedom to enjoy it.

His lips moved to the other side of her neck, while the fingers of his other hand tiptoed and tickled their way playfully up her bare forearm and came to rest just under the edge of the short blue sleeves. Each of his fingertips were alive with the frantic cadence of his pulse, or was it hers? She realized she didn't even care anymore and she laughed aloud, finally unrestrained.

She felt him grin once more against her neck and this time it only made her giddier. She pressed her own lips together with a little hum of satisfaction and closing her eyes, decided to change the game.

It seemed like no presumption at all for the former nun to reach her unoccupied hand back to clutch at the nape of her fiance's neck, to tangle her fingers into the short hairs there. Now that she had her mainstay, she was going to keep him.

And a happier kept man had never existed as he upped the stakes himself, parting his lips and placing them around the shell of her ear, dragging them oh so heavenly-slowly to trace the ivory curve of it. Her fingers clutched, attempting to fist into the dark bristles that grazed his collar, then flattened and brushed upwards. She felt his entire body shudder in response and thrilled at it, not only merely that she had caused it, but the ultimate revelation that she could. None of this was forbidden to her, there was no guilt in this scalding succession of touches any longer. If only she had been able to feel a glimmer of this glorious harmony the day he had first kissed her hand, what comfort it would have brought her in those long months of solitude.

Her train of thought, much disrupted, was again gone when his lips reached her earlobe and lightning shot across the entirety of her skin as she felt his teeth sink into it, worrying it just a little between them. Her arm went completely limp and fell back to her side as she strangled the noise rising in her throat, turning it to a half-murmured moan of his name. It seemingly encouraged him all the more, as he whispered her name into her skin after lowering his head to kiss her neck lightly once more.

Somewhere in the distance, down a long hallway, a world apart from the couple enraptured in one another, the front door to Nonnatus House opened to allow a boisterous clique of midwives entrance, then shut again.

A current of the early November air drafted its way through the convent heralding their arrival, stirring the fringes of handmade cushions and drifting into successive rooms. The last thing it did before dissipating entirely was chase off the cloud of steam that blanketed Patrick and Shelagh, awakening them both to the idea that they would not be alone much longer.

Shelagh froze, and Patrick sighed as the footsteps and chatter of their approaching colleagues became audible. He placed a last kiss just under her ear, squeezed her fingers one final time in concession, then stepped around her to a much more proper distance, leaning an elbow against the wall, looking down at the autoclave that had unintentionally started this, uh, inquiry.

The midwives happened into the room less than a minute later: Trixie, Cynthia and Sister Evangelina were returning from two separate deliveries. Their heavy leather bags deposited firmly onto the table, they greeted nurse and doctor in turn.

"Oh! Dr. Turner! Why, fancy seeing _you_ here_,_" trilled the platinum blonde excitedly, with an undertone of insinuation that no one could have mistaken. Patrick shoved his hands into his pockets, feeling himself blush slightly. For once, Trixie was rather closer to the truth than she knew.

The Sister grunted a sufficient acknowledgement, and Nurse Miller said a kind hello; then inquired whether he had been able to go over the notes she'd left on the Thompson case.

"Oh, well, yes I read through them. I think we should discuss it further with the couple themselves, however, so let's go and..." Patrick stopped, suddenly realizing he was getting carried off with work and hadn't yet even made so much as eye contact with his betrothed since releasing her. He was a little worried he'd gone too far, made more of an advance than she was ready for. Shelagh had since resumed and finally finished her task, the little canvas bags set to the side, ready to be used once more. Neat and tidy, so opposite to what he was feeling, as if his skin was somehow too big for him, and he swam about in it trying to gather himself back together. He looked again at Nurse Miller, who was awaiting the end of his answer. "...we'll have to set up an appointment with them sometime this week. Would you mind phoning them to see when? I'll be along with the notes in just a moment." The small brunette midwife smiled pleasantly and nodded her accession, turning on her heel.

He made to get his notes, but stopped mid-step, feeling a little powerless, this wasn't how he had wanted that heady moment to end. He'd envisioned- well, something rather different.

Shelagh looked up at him then. He wanted to explain himself to her, to apologize for having been so forward. Upon meeting her gaze, however, Patrick felt even more helpless than before. Instead of guilt or anything resembling an accusation, the turquoise depth of her eyes twinkled amusement and some sort of mad vindication. She was laughing at him? He then understood that she'd been watching him all the while, and bearing witness to how unbalanced he was. For she was as steady as the sun now, flush gone from her cheeks and neck, emanating a delicate radiant glow of contentment, and he was still everywhere, riding the aftershocks of an earthquake he'd been the one to originate.

Shaking off the last residual heat of the preceding moments, he tried to clear his head. Whatever dangerous lesson it was that he had begun, she had mastered it. Shelagh bit her coral lower lip in her teeth, holding back an enterprising grin, as her gaze dared him once more, like the curled tendrils of her hair had in the first place. He blinked hard in opposition to the myriad images her boldness created suddenly in his fevered imagination, which cleared, leaving only her, just Shelagh, in his mind's eye. Why was he surprised? In all the years he had known her, he'd seen it countless times. Whatever this woman made up her mind to understand, there really was no stopping her. Patrick smiled a wry yet contented farewell, which was returned with a sparkling eye and half a quiet laugh.

He gathered up his notes and stepped out into the hall, still marveling at the pitch of her learning curve; the deliberation and hesitance in each successive step echoing back his every emotion to the one person who could understand them.

* * *

_But there are _

_Richer entanglements... the crown of these_

_Is made of love and friendship, and sits high_

_Upon the forehead of humanity._

_All its more ponderous and bulky worth_

_Is friendship, whence there ever issues forth_

_A steady splendour; but at the tip-top,_

_There hangs by unseen film, an orbed drop_

_Of light, and that is love: its influence,_

_Thrown in our eyes, genders a novel sense,_

_At which we start and fret; till in the end,_

_Melting into its radiance, we blend,_

_Mingle, and so become a part of it,—-_

_Book I_


End file.
